Germans are brainiest (but at least we're smarter than the French)

BRITAIN and France have experienced long periods of conflict and rivalry but now victory in one area can be claimed: Britons are more intelligent than the French. A new European league of IQ scores has ranked the British in eighth place, well above the French, who were 19th. According to Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, Britons have an average IQ of 100. The French scored 94. But it is not all good news. Top of the table were the Germans, with an IQ of 107. The British were also beaten by the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.

Professor Lynn, who caused controversy last year by claiming that men were more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, said that populations in the colder, more challenging environments of Northern Europe had developed larger brains than those in warmer climates further south. The average brain size in Northern and Central Europe is 1,320cc and in southeast Europe it is 1,312cc. “The early human beings in northerly areas had to survive during cold winters when there were no plant foods and they were forced to hunt big game,” he said. “The main environmental influence on IQ is diet, and people in southeast Europe would have had less of the proteins, minerals and vitamins provided by meat which are essential for brain development.”

He added that differences in intelligence across Britain could be attributed to bright people moving to London over hundreds of years. Adults in England and Wales have an IQ of 100.5, higher than Ireland and Scotland, both with 97. People living in London and the South East average 102. “Once in the capital they have settled and reared children, and these children have inherited their high intelligence and transmitted it to further generations.”

The pattern is repeated in other countries, Professor Lynn claimed. In France, IQ scores in Paris were much higher than those in rural areas.

Professor Lynn has spent three decades analysing thousands of test results to scrutinise the role of evolution in IQ. He has published his findings in a new book. Britons excel in another area of Professor Lynn’s research. He found that university students had, at 109, the second-highest undergraduate IQs in the world, beaten only by their US counterparts on 110.

Professor Lynn ascribes the differences between British and French intelligence levels to the results of military conflict. He described it as “a hitherto unrecognised law of history” that “the side with the higher IQ normally wins, unless they are hugely outnumbered, as Germany was after 1942”.

A “normal” IQ ranges from 85 to 115 but exceptionally gifted people have scores starting at 145.

Curious, then, that temperate Holland is "smarter" than any of the cold countries,

The Dutch, much as they doth protest, are completely indistinguishable from the northern Germans right across the border. In the Middle Ages, Dutch and Flemings were considered Germans, and indiscriminately mixed with other Germans, especially in settling Silesia, Posen, and Prussia. The artificial division is an artifact of the religious wars of the 16th century, and the abberation of establishing Plattdeutsch, and a phonetic spelling thereof, as the official language of the Netherlands, and Hochdeutsch as the official language of Germany. The Flemings of Belgium, at least, are honest enough to admit this openly, and at the various times they have been occupied by the Germans, have eagerly collaborated with those they viewed as their ethnic kinfolk.

and warm Italy is smarter than Sweden, England, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, or, actually, anywhere that's really, really cold.

Well, it was the ROMAN Empire and the ROMAN Catholic Church which held sway for so long, not the SWEDISH Empire and SWEDISH Catholic Church. Surely there is something to this IQ-wise. When the wide ranging Norsemen came into contact with Constantinople New Rome, the best thing they could come up with there was to be body-guards to the Romans. In Russia, England, France, Ireland, Sicily, etc., the Varangians became the rulers. In Old and New Rome, they became servants.

One wonders at how well the Lombards of northern Italy and the Tuscano-Roman population of the center must compare to the population of Naples and Sicily.

Russia is as cold as it gets, but the're down there in the French range, on the charts.

French results are probably polluted by the large Muslim presence, just as White Americans are dragged down the IQ chart by our Blacks and Hispanic compatriots (neither of whom should feel particularly bad about that, because if they would go home to Africa and Latin America, our subpopulations would be the master-race/high-IQ folks of those lands BY FAR). Russia has similar Muslim issues, as well as the historical artifact of having killed off the brightest folks in the Kulak purges and two world wars and a truly horrific abortion holocaust. 70 years of Communism has left nothing but the stupidest and most docile people to tell the sad tale. There may be a similar force at work in France from the large losses to wars and revolution from Louis XIV through WWI, combined with an early adoption of a birth control mentality long before there were birth control devices of any use (thus those who succeeded in not reproducing were probably the cleverest of the population - a disgenic problem for France).

The very low IQ of the Balkans region should probably be attributed to the Turkish yoke, depopulation, and Jannissary laws.

They might be smart enough to avoid such traps.

Some of the dumbest people I've ever known have been lawyers, doctors, high income business people, socialites, celebrities, and members of Mensa.

I've also known people with high incomes who were smart at earning money but dumb in every other way. Some who come to mind blew millions on multiple wives and girlfriends, some on booze, some on drugs. Some were good at earning money but bad at keeping it. You can't say these people are smart.

Then there are many who inhereted wealth but blew it carelessly.

And what's smart about a workaholic who drives himself into an early grave?

Then there are the doctors who give sage advice to everyone but drop dead themselves at 40 from overeating, drinking, womanizing, overworking. Smart???

Then, of course, there are the Hollywood zillionaires who rake in the money but can't hide their utter stupidity--Leftist causes, Democrat candidates, mindless rants! You can't get any stupider than those people!

In fact, it could be argued that anyone who subjects himself/herself to life in the urban fastlane may not be as smart as one might wish.

When I lived in San Francisco, I knew that I could get anything and everything I wanted right there--but it would take me all day, fighting traffic, to get it and return home.

Today--in The Middle of Nowhere--I can get everything and anything overnight through the internet or the telephone. There's no stress. All's quiet. The air's fresh. So is the water. The pace is easy. My neighbors are sophisticated. Three are retired concert musicians. One's an art lawyer, still active. One's a businessman who travels all over the world. Many are salt-of-the-earth natives who mix well with the transplants. We see one another occasionally but not too much. Life is good. To hell with the sociological indicators.

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