Quote from 1prometheus:
Yet in the real word, small differences matter a great deal. It is the difference between a college athlete and someone who can go pro. The difference between someone who has the mental aptitude to be a Dr. vs. someone who can't figure out Algebra. The patterns of performance are all around us, and most significantly they MATCH the empirical data of what average population differences between races (using the definition I provide) would suggest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html?_r=1&ref=science&pagewanted=all
Key quote:
"One aspect of this pattern is that there seem to be more genes under recent selection in East Asians and Europeans than in Africans, possibly because the people who left Africa were then forced to adapt to different environments. âItâs a reasonable inference that non-Africans were becoming exposed to a wide variety of novel climates,â says Dr. Stoneking of the Max Planck ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hmm?
"The presence of both the putatively adaptive and neutral alleles at these loci provides a unique opportunity for using normal trait variation within humans to test the hypothesis that the recent selective sweeps are driven by an advantage in cognitive abilities. Here, we report a large-scale association study between the adaptive alleles of these genes and normal variation in several measures of IQ. Five independent samples were used, totaling 2,393 subjects, including both family-based and population-based datasets. Our overall findings do not support a detectable association between the recent adaptive evolution of either ASPM or Microcephalin and changes in IQ."
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/01/aspm-microcephalin-and-intelligence.php