Source: TW
Chess, Hindus, and the Ashkenazim:
Our Hindu ancestors invented chess. The Mahabharata mentions chaturanga with 64 squares. Other Sanskrit texts mention variants of chess with 81 and 100 squares respectively. Yet, modern chess is very much an Ashkenazim game. Most of the strategies were developed by the Ashkenazim in the last millennium. The Hindu contribution to chess pretty much disappeared during the same period. It’s not surprising that more than 50% of the top chess players have been Ashkenazim even though the Ashkenazim only constitute 11 million of the world population.
How do we explain this? The simplest explanation is higher IQ resulting from natural selection. All Ashkenazim descended from 350 individuals 600 YBP - see 2014 Nature study and 2022 Harvard study by Reich. However, it must be pointed out that Reich incorrectly attributes the Ashkenazim traits, including higher average IQ distribution along the Bell curve, to Founder Effect. That’s not the case though.
Why is Reich wrong though? Genetic studies have confirmed that Ashkenazim only have 5-8% admixture with Europeans. SNP genomic studies on 550,000 sites confirm that the Ashkenazim are a distinct population from Europeans and that their evolution is the direct result of natural selection (not Founder Effect). On this, see Legacy - A genetic Study of Jewish People by Harry Ostrer and Genome Biology 10:1, 2009 - A Genome-wide Genetic Signature of Jewish Ancestry Perfectly Separates Individuals with and without Full Jewish Ancestry in a Large Random Sample of European Americans.
In other words, Ashkenazi Jews followed a different genetic path of evolution unlike their European counterparts. This resulted in natural selections which bestowed them with specific traits including higher IQ. By the way, IQ correlates with wealth generation. By the 13th century, Ashkenazim contributed to 20% of imperial tax although they were just 0.01% of population. As Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending have shown, Ashkenazim mutations occurred in the cluster of genes which controls the sphingolipid storage pathways simultaneously. In other words, this was a natural selection process which directly enhanced intelligence.
Ashkenazi Jews weren’t forced into usury as is often erroneously thought. They actually chose that profession because it bestowed upon them higher adaptive fitness.(5) It enhanced their intelligence and wealth. The Ashkenazim collective interest in chess is an inevitable by-product of this Jewish quest for intelligence.
In contrast, Hindus departed from pursuits that would have enhanced their intelligence in the last millennium or so. As our society stagnated at many levels, we invented few strategies in chess. It took a Vishy Anand to train an army of Indian chess players over the last two decades to usher in a semblance of Indian dominance. However, we must not be under any delusion. The Ashkenazim, with just 11 million population, have a disproportionately higher success rate than 1.4 billion Indians combined.
Moral of the story: Intelligence matters and it’s driven by natural selection processes. A culture that fosters intelligence would eventually come out on top. A culture that embraces mediocrity would be content with priding itself on past glory.