Rome fell due to climate change and vaccine hesitancy, everyone knows that.
To be serious though it is a very interesting theory, the question I have is why did Rome rise so rapidly in power and can we assume it was due to those in Rome?
3rd century BC Rome ruled over less than a fifth of modern day Italy, by 100 AD it ruled over most of modern Western Europe, the UK, Egypt, Turkey, all of populated North Africa, the Ukraine, Greece and its islands and the Levant. Given that Rome was governed by regional governors is it reasonable to say the empire fell because of the people who lived in Rome? Did this small region have evolutionary pressures that didn't exist elsewhere or did they hit on a system of governance that was far better than the alternatives?
Early days, their culture was very efficient and goal oriented to survive with constant fights with neighbor tribes + they had some luck at the time huge empires like alexandria or greece didnt take interest in Italy. Then Id suggest as empire grew, what Dutton pointed out of multiculturalism and low fertility problems + dysgenics show right direction along realigned interest of culture (more infrastructure, leasure and such, not all military anymore). As empire grew, Rome and Italy region had more and more diverse people from all over empire vs early days it was very homogenous, tight group. Governance and unity is also issue when lot of different tribes and religions are in same entity. So yes partly due to people who lived there but also 3rd, 4th century they had multiple serious external shocks like famine, diseases at the same time. Once you get big, can be pretty inefficient and wasteful for long while, until it collapses... bigger entity also has more vulnerability points (how to feed all 100million people all over empire and so on), but counterpoint is very few can really challenge them from outside by force.
Judging by their respective civilizational achievements, the Germanic migrants/invaders must have had way lower avg. IQ than the indigenous Italic peoples. Higher avg IQ generally leads to more individualism and lower ethnocentrism. No wonder lower IQ people like the Turks, Moors and Germanics managed to conquer more intelligent but less ethnocentric nations.
German tribes gave some sort of individualism, equality of sorts.... roman empire adopted some of those traits later on when those tribes became part of empire. So in that sense later centuries before collapse have lot of things we still have in modern society. Most of warfare innovation of course happened BC era. I agree original early century italians must have way higher than avg IQ to survive, but AD era it wasnt so... suggesting invader must have higher avg to win. Gallic tribes tried many times with much greater numbers.... their leader must have been extremely smart but is IQ all there is? Size has quality on its own and roman empire was simply gigantic after Caesar in population and highly refined... it would be like modern USA against Libya. IQ also provides efficiency + better organization of things, thus perhaps trust + more innovation (Dutton's Albania episode how low IQ society is not good)... low ethnocentrism reminds of Sweden episode. Then there is question of spartan style totalitarian warfare society vs Carthage who bought all of their army troops as mercenaries. Looking how much nutrition has effect in children getting full potential as adult, just looking at map I can see your point Italy vs northern germanic tribes. So there are lot of factors at play, IQ can be used for many pursuits(it changed priority in roman empire as existential threat wasnt as real anymore).
I thought the description of the mismatch between the more intelligent "environmentally sensitive" upper class and their environment was very fuzzy. The only clue was that they were living in a "zoo" which offended their environmentally sensitive dispositions. Seems to me the wealthy class in Rome could have their own areas in the city and country estates. I'd like to see a better and more detailed description of what the environmental mismatch was for the more intelligent.
I suspect you could test this in the modern day British Isles. Is average IQ dropping with low indigenous birth rates and high levels of immigration from Africa and Eastern Europe?
Apart from the Romans, which other civilizations show the same pattern? (on the basis that you have an hypothesis but to have a true theory you need to demonstrate that is is reproducible)
Rome fell due to climate change and vaccine hesitancy, everyone knows that.
To be serious though it is a very interesting theory, the question I have is why did Rome rise so rapidly in power and can we assume it was due to those in Rome?
3rd century BC Rome ruled over less than a fifth of modern day Italy, by 100 AD it ruled over most of modern Western Europe, the UK, Egypt, Turkey, all of populated North Africa, the Ukraine, Greece and its islands and the Levant. Given that Rome was governed by regional governors is it reasonable to say the empire fell because of the people who lived in Rome? Did this small region have evolutionary pressures that didn't exist elsewhere or did they hit on a system of governance that was far better than the alternatives?
Early days, their culture was very efficient and goal oriented to survive with constant fights with neighbor tribes + they had some luck at the time huge empires like alexandria or greece didnt take interest in Italy. Then Id suggest as empire grew, what Dutton pointed out of multiculturalism and low fertility problems + dysgenics show right direction along realigned interest of culture (more infrastructure, leasure and such, not all military anymore). As empire grew, Rome and Italy region had more and more diverse people from all over empire vs early days it was very homogenous, tight group. Governance and unity is also issue when lot of different tribes and religions are in same entity. So yes partly due to people who lived there but also 3rd, 4th century they had multiple serious external shocks like famine, diseases at the same time. Once you get big, can be pretty inefficient and wasteful for long while, until it collapses... bigger entity also has more vulnerability points (how to feed all 100million people all over empire and so on), but counterpoint is very few can really challenge them from outside by force.
Judging by their respective civilizational achievements, the Germanic migrants/invaders must have had way lower avg. IQ than the indigenous Italic peoples. Higher avg IQ generally leads to more individualism and lower ethnocentrism. No wonder lower IQ people like the Turks, Moors and Germanics managed to conquer more intelligent but less ethnocentric nations.
German tribes gave some sort of individualism, equality of sorts.... roman empire adopted some of those traits later on when those tribes became part of empire. So in that sense later centuries before collapse have lot of things we still have in modern society. Most of warfare innovation of course happened BC era. I agree original early century italians must have way higher than avg IQ to survive, but AD era it wasnt so... suggesting invader must have higher avg to win. Gallic tribes tried many times with much greater numbers.... their leader must have been extremely smart but is IQ all there is? Size has quality on its own and roman empire was simply gigantic after Caesar in population and highly refined... it would be like modern USA against Libya. IQ also provides efficiency + better organization of things, thus perhaps trust + more innovation (Dutton's Albania episode how low IQ society is not good)... low ethnocentrism reminds of Sweden episode. Then there is question of spartan style totalitarian warfare society vs Carthage who bought all of their army troops as mercenaries. Looking how much nutrition has effect in children getting full potential as adult, just looking at map I can see your point Italy vs northern germanic tribes. So there are lot of factors at play, IQ can be used for many pursuits(it changed priority in roman empire as existential threat wasnt as real anymore).
This sounds similar to the breakthrough study released in November 2019 on Roman genetics,
https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/08_november_2019/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1536743
I'm pretty sure Survive the Jive covered the above study, too, at the time.
P.S. You should bring back those graphics at the beginning that present your topic & name; I haven't seen it lately (as of Sep. 2024).
I thought the description of the mismatch between the more intelligent "environmentally sensitive" upper class and their environment was very fuzzy. The only clue was that they were living in a "zoo" which offended their environmentally sensitive dispositions. Seems to me the wealthy class in Rome could have their own areas in the city and country estates. I'd like to see a better and more detailed description of what the environmental mismatch was for the more intelligent.
To your knowledge, for which other civilizations do we have available a significant number of genomes such that a similar study could be conducted?
I suspect you could test this in the modern day British Isles. Is average IQ dropping with low indigenous birth rates and high levels of immigration from Africa and Eastern Europe?
I was thinking more of historic civilizations like Ming China or Mesopotamia or Maya or smth
Apart from the Romans, which other civilizations show the same pattern? (on the basis that you have an hypothesis but to have a true theory you need to demonstrate that is is reproducible)
I guess we don't have the genomes, but certainly Greece and Baghdad.