Henry Cosad Harpending (January 13, 1944 – April 3, 2016) was an American
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
and writer. He was a
distinguished professor at the
University of Utah
The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...
, and formerly taught at
Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...
and the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
.
He was a member of the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
.
He is known for the book ''
The 10,000 Year Explosion
''The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution'' is a 2009 book by anthropologists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. Starting with their own take on the conventional wisdom that the evolutionary process stopped wh ...
'', which he co-authored with
Gregory Cochran
Gregory M. Cochran (born 1953) is an American anthropologist and author who argues that cultural innovation resulted in new and constantly shifting selection pressures for genetic change, thereby accelerating human evolution and divergence betwee ...
.''
''
Some of Harpending's statements about
race, biology and intelligence were controversial. He is described by the
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white su ...
(SPLC) as a
white nationalist, and associated with groups described as such.
Education and career
Harpending was born in
Dundee, New York
Dundee is a village in Yates County, New York, United States. The population was 1,725 at the 2010 census. The name was taken from Dundee, the city in Scotland with a population of 148,260.
The Village of Dundee is in the Town of Starkey. The vi ...
, in 1944. He graduated from Dundee Central High School in 1961, received his A.B. degree from
Hamilton College in 1964, and his Ph.D. from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1972.
Harpending studied
population genetics
Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and pop ...
.
After graduating from Harvard, he worked at
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
(1972-1973), the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
(1973–85),
Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...
(1985-1997), and the
University of Utah
The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...
(1997-2016). Over his career, he contributed to over 120 publications.
Harpending's first wife was Patricia Draper, with whom he had two children. He married his second wife, Renee Pennington, around 1995. They had one son.
He died on April 3, 2016, at the age of 72, following a stroke.
Work
Population genetics
According to a biography by
Alan R. Rogers, in the 1970s Harpending pioneered the study of the relationship between genetics and geography, developing methods that are still in use. He also overturned the prevailing understanding of
group selection, by showing that group selection is most likely to operate when there is strong gene flow between groups, rather than when they are isolated from one another. Harpending also developed the approach of analyzing populations using
R-matrix The term R-matrix has several meanings, depending on the field of study.
The term R-matrix is used in connection with the Yang–Baxter equation. This is an equation which was first introduced in the field of statistical mechanics, taking its n ...
methods, and together with Trefor Jonkin, wrote the most highly cited chapter in the 1973 handbook ''Methods and Theory of Anthropological Genetics''.
!Kung and Herero
Harpending did fieldwork in
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number of ...
(
Botswana
Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label=Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahar ...
,
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
) and spoke the
!Kung language.
In 1981, while with the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
, Harpending studied the group during the
South African Border War. Harpending described the !Kung society as "like
Rorschachs" because anthropologists could draw contradictory conclusions.
His fieldwork was the basis of the 1993 monograph ''The Structure of an African Pastoralist Community'', with Pennington.
Harpending also did extensive fieldwork on the
Herero people
The Herero ( hz, Ovaherero) are a Bantu ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa. There were an estimated 250,000 Herero people in Namibia in 2013. They speak Otjiherero, a Bantu language. Though the Herero primarily reside in Namibia, t ...
, a cattle-herding group in the Botswana area. Herero are locally known for "their traditionalism, their wealth in cattle and their dominating older women". Harpending's previous experience with the !Kung people was useful because many Herero are bilingual in !Kung. Harpending had previous contact with Herero from earlier research trips.
In 1973, Harpending helped start the
Kalahari People's Fund. The KPF was an outgrowth of the multidisciplinary Harvard Kalahari Research Group led by Richard Lee and Irven DeVore. ''Newsweek'' described the KPF as one of the first people's advocacy organizations in the US with professional anthropological expertise behind it.
Ashkenazi intelligence
In the 2005 paper "Natural History Of Ashkenazi Intelligence",
Gregory Cochran
Gregory M. Cochran (born 1953) is an American anthropologist and author who argues that cultural innovation resulted in new and constantly shifting selection pressures for genetic change, thereby accelerating human evolution and divergence betwee ...
, Jason Hardy, and Harpending suggest that the high average
IQ of
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
may be attributed to natural selection for intelligence during the Middle Ages and a low rate of genetic inflow. They hypothesize that the occupational profile of the Jewish community in medieval Europe had resulted in selection pressure for mutations that increase intelligence, but can also result in hereditary neurological disorders.
Harpending's hypothesis about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence has attracted both praise and criticism, with some scientists regarding the theory as highly implausible, while others regard it as worth considering. According to cognitive psychologist
Steven Pinker, this theory "meets the standards of a good scientific theory, though it is tentative and could turn out to be mistaken." On the other hand, geneticist
David Reich has argued that the hypothesis is contradicted by evidence that the higher rate of genetic diseases among Ashkenazi Jews is in fact due to
genetic drift
Genetic drift, also known as allelic drift or the Wright effect, is the change in the frequency of an existing gene variant (allele) in a population due to random chance.
Genetic drift may cause gene variants to disappear completely and there ...
.
''The 10,000 Year Explosion''
In ''
The 10,000 Year Explosion
''The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution'' is a 2009 book by anthropologists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. Starting with their own take on the conventional wisdom that the evolutionary process stopped wh ...
'', which he co-authored with
Gregory Cochran
Gregory M. Cochran (born 1953) is an American anthropologist and author who argues that cultural innovation resulted in new and constantly shifting selection pressures for genetic change, thereby accelerating human evolution and divergence betwee ...
, Harpending suggests a common belief that human genetic adaptation stopped 40,000 years ago is incorrect and that humans evolved increasingly rapidly in response to the new challenges presented by agriculture and civilization. The result was accelerating evolution which has varied according to new niches or environments that particular populations inhabit.
The final chapter of ''The 10,000 Year Explosion'' expands on their paper from the ''Journal of Biosocial Science''
[G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending]
"Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence"
, ''Journal of Biosocial Science'' 38 (5), pp. 659–693 (2006). on the issue of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence. Harpending and Cochran argue the cause of the claim of Ashkenazim having higher mean verbal and mathematical intelligence than other ethnic groups (as well as having a relatively high number of genetic diseases, such as
Tay–Sachs disease
Tay–Sachs disease is a genetic disorder that results in the destruction of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The most common form is infantile Tay–Sachs disease, which becomes apparent around three to six months of age, with the baby ...
,
Canavan disease
Canavan disease, or Canavan-Van Bogaert-Bertrand disease, is a rare and fatal autosomal recessive degenerative disease that causes progressive damage to nerve cells and loss of white matter in the brain. It is one of the most common degenerative ...
,
Niemann–Pick disease
Niemann–Pick disease is a group of severe inherited metabolic disorders, in which sphingomyelin accumulates in lysosomes in cells (the lysosomes normally degrade material that comes from out of cells).
These disorders involve the dysfunctional ...
,
Gaucher's disease
Gaucher's disease or Gaucher disease () (GD) is a genetic disorder
A genetic disorder is a health problem caused by one or more abnormalities in the genome. It can be caused by a mutation in a single gene (monogenic) or multiple genes (polyg ...
,
familial dysautonomia
Familial dysautonomia (FD), also known as Riley-Day Syndrome, is a rare, progressive, recessive genetic disorder of the autonomic nervous system that affects the development and survival of sensory, sympathetic and some parasympathetic neurons ...
,
Bloom syndrome,
Fanconi anemia
Fanconi anaemia (FA) is a rare genetic disease resulting in impaired response to DNA damage. Although it is a very rare disorder, study of this and other bone marrow failure syndromes has improved scientific understanding of the mechanisms of nor ...
,
cystic fibrosis
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a rare genetic disorder that affects mostly the lungs, but also the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and intestine. Long-term issues include difficulty breathing and coughing up mucus as a result of frequent lung infections. O ...
and
mucolipidosis IV
Mucolipidosis type IV (ML IV, ganglioside sialidase deficiency, or ML4) is an autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disorder. Individuals with the disorder have many symptoms including delayed psychomotor development and various ocular aberrations ...
) is due to the historically isolated population of Jews in Europe.
Harpending and Cochran's book ''
The 10,000 Year Explosion
''The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution'' is a 2009 book by anthropologists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. Starting with their own take on the conventional wisdom that the evolutionary process stopped wh ...
'' was reviewed in academic journals including the ''American Journal of Human Biology'', ''Evolutionary Psychology'', ''Evolution and Human Behavior'', ''Explorations in Anthropology'', and the ''Journal of Anthropological Research''. Reviews by
Milford H. Wolpoff, Gregory Gorelik and
Todd K. Shackelford
Todd Kennedy Shackelford (born 1971) is an American psychologist and professor at Oakland University. He is best known for his work in evolutionary psychology. He is the editor in chief of the academic journals ''Evolutionary Psychology'' and ''E ...
, and Edward Hagen praised the book as creative and insightful, arguing that it makes a valuable contribution to understanding human evolution, but criticized some of the book's hypotheses as not adequately supported. Negative reviews by Cadell Last and Keith Hunley criticized the book for regarding
race as a biological category and for presenting an overly simplistic view of the influence of genetics on human behavioral variation.
Views on race
The
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white su ...
has documented Harpending's works and statements on race, noting his association with
white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other Race (human classification), races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any Power (social and polit ...
groups and referring to his work as an attempt to perpetuate
scientific racism. The SPLC notes he attributed
stereotypes of different human populations to genetic differences, often saying that
Africans
African or Africans may refer to:
* Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa:
** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa
*** Ethn ...
,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
ns, and "Baltimore"
[Henry Harpending, quoted in ] (
African-Americans) possess the same genetic temperamental predispositions which he said are characterized by "violence, laziness, and a preference for 'mating instead of parenting'",
[Double quotes: SPLC; single quotes: Henry Harpending; both quoted in ] while
Europeans
Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common genetic ancestry, common language, or both. Pan and Pfeil (2004) ...
and
East Asians
East Asian people (East Asians) are the people from East Asia, which consists of China, Taiwan, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, and South Korea. The total population of all countries within this region is estimated to be 1.677 billion and 21% of the ...
"have evolved higher intelligence and 'tend to be more disciplined than people who take life for granted'";
that he favored mass deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States using FEMA camps as part of the process and did not believe that more money should be spent on education in the United States because he thought the race-based disparities are based on genetics rather than disparities in funding; that he gave conferences at what the SPLC designates as white supremacist groups; and that he supported
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
, crediting it in the form of the
death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
for the "genetic pacification" of the western European population.
Harpending once stated that people of sub-Saharan ancestry do not have the same genetic propensity for "hard work" as Eurasians do. According to geneticist
David Reich, "there is simply no scientific evidence to support this statement."
Harpending himself denied being a racist,
though he acknowledged that his views would be called racist by others.
In 2011, he delivered a lecture on race and intelligence at the H.L. Mencken Club, a
white nationalist conference founded by
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried (born November 21, 1941) is an American paleoconservative political philosopher, historian, and writer. He is a former Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is editor-in-chief of the paleocons ...
and
Richard Spencer, described by the
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
as a "racist gathering".
In a 2012 blog post, he claimed that racism does not exist, describing it as a continuation of traditional African beliefs about
witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
– a belief in "vague and invisible forces that are oppressing people".
Selected publications
*
*
*
See also
*
John D. Hawks
John Hawks is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He also maintains a paleoanthropology blog. Contrary to the common view that cultural evolution has made human biological evolution insignificant, H ...
References
External links
West HunterBlog of Harpending and Cochran.
Henry Harpending Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white su ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harpending, Henry
1944 births
2016 deaths
American anthropologists
American eugenicists
American white supremacists
Factors related to intelligence
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Harvard University alumni
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
People from Yates County, New York
Population geneticists
Race and intelligence controversy
Proponents of scientific racism
University of Utah faculty