Vincent Matthew Sarich (December 13, 1934October 27, 2012) 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
biochemist
Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and Cell (biology), cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of ...
. He was Professor Emeritus in anthropology at
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
.
Sarich and his PhD advisor, Allan Wilson, used molecular data to estimate that humans and
chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
s have a common ancestor just four to five million years ago. Their paper on their finding was published in 1967. At the time, scientists considered the common ancestor to live ten to 30 million years ago, and their revised estimate has become well accepted. Sarich generated controversy with his support for analyzing human behavior and populations in evolutionary terms.
Early life and education
Born in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, subdivision_name ...
, he received a bachelor of science in
chemistry
Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
from
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...
and his masters and doctorate in anthropology from
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, where he was supervised by Sherwood Washburn. He was a member of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford from 1967 to 1981, and taught at UC Berkeley from 1966 through 1994.
As a doctoral student, and along with his PhD supervisor
Allan Wilson, Sarich measured the strength of immunological cross-reactions of
blood serum
Serum () is the fluid and solute component of blood which does not play a role in clotting. It may be defined as blood plasma without the clotting factors, or as blood with all cells and clotting factors removed. Serum includes all proteins not u ...
albumin
Albumin is a family of globular proteins, the most common of which are the serum albumins. All the proteins of the albumin family are water-soluble, moderately soluble in concentrated salt solutions, and experience heat denaturation. Albumins ...
between pairs of creatures, including humans and African apes (
chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
s and
gorilla
Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...
s).
The strength of the reaction could be expressed numerically as an
Immunological Distance
Immunology is a branch of medicineImmunology for Medical Students, Roderick Nairn, Matthew Helbert, Mosby, 2007 and biology that covers the medical study of immune systems in humans, animals, plants and sapient species. In such we can see there ...
, which was in turn proportional to the number of
amino acid
Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha am ...
differences between homologous proteins in different species. Sarich and Wilson showed that the ''pattern'' of differences between modern species could only be explained if the molecular change along different lineages had in fact accumulated approximately equally (i.e., where a type of 'molecular clock').
This method they called the
relative rate test The relative rate test is a genetic comparative test between two ingroups (somewhat closely related species) and an outgroup or “reference species” to compare mutation and evolutionary rates between the species. Each ingroup species is compared ...
, and it showed that one could empirically test whether the molecular change was constant simply by looking at the pattern of differences between modern forms of the molecule. By constructing a calibration curve of the I.D. of species' pairs with best-attested divergence times in the
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
record, the data could be used as a
molecular clock
The molecular clock is a figurative term for a technique that uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged. The biomolecular data used for such calculations are usually nucleoti ...
to estimate the times of divergence of pairs with poorer or unknown fossil records.
Career
In their 1967 paper ''Immunological time scale for hominid evolution'' in ''
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
'', Sarich and Wilson estimated the divergence time of humans and apes as four to five million years ago,
at a time when standard interpretations of the fossil record gave this divergence as at least 10 to as much as 30 million years. Their logic first involved showing empirically that the
albumin
Albumin is a family of globular proteins, the most common of which are the serum albumins. All the proteins of the albumin family are water-soluble, moderately soluble in concentrated salt solutions, and experience heat denaturation. Albumins ...
s of several Old World Monkey (
Cercopithecoidea
Old World monkey is the common English name for a family of primates known taxonomically as the Cercopithecidae (). Twenty-four genera and 138 species are recognized, making it the largest primate family. Old World monkey genera include baboons ...
) species was equally different from human albumin and chimpanzee albumin (within experimental error). This constituted a
relative rate test The relative rate test is a genetic comparative test between two ingroups (somewhat closely related species) and an outgroup or “reference species” to compare mutation and evolutionary rates between the species. Each ingroup species is compared ...
of molecular change, and showed that both human and chimpanzee albumin lineages must have accumulated approximately equal amounts of change since their common ancestor (else one would be more different from the outgroup monkeys than the other), thereby providing direct empirical evidence of an approximate
molecular clock
The molecular clock is a figurative term for a technique that uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged. The biomolecular data used for such calculations are usually nucleoti ...
for this molecule. This same pattern (i.e., equal distance between any two species and a more distantly related 'outgroup' species) held for all the empirical comparisons they made among primate species (within experimental error). Further work on additional molecules (for example,
transferrin
Transferrins are glycoproteins found in vertebrates which bind to and consequently mediate the transport of iron (Fe) through blood plasma. They are produced in the liver and contain binding sites for two Fe3+ ions. Human transferrin is encode ...
and
hemoglobin
Hemoglobin (haemoglobin BrE) (from the Greek word αἷμα, ''haîma'' 'blood' + Latin ''globus'' 'ball, sphere' + ''-in'') (), abbreviated Hb or Hgb, is the iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloprotein present in red blood cells (erythrocyte ...
) showed that these had also evolved in an approximate clocklike pattern in different Primate lineages. Phylogenetic trees based on these pattern of species differences were then constructed, though these could only indicate relative branch points, because the molecular differences - though having been shown by the relative rate test to have evolved approximately clocklike over millions of years - could not by themselves indicate how fast or slow the clock was (i.e., how many changes had occurred per unit of time). For this, Sarich and Wilson used the most well-established fossil evidence (In particular: no primates of modern aspect had been found prior to the
K-T boundary, ~65 million years ago) to calibrate the tree's branch points. This work on a variety of molecules (and confirmed by modern DNA differences) consistently suggested a recent (~5 million year old) common ancestry with the African apes (
chimpanzees
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative the ...
and
gorilla
Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...
s).
Subsequent fossil discoveries, notably
Lucy
Lucy is an English feminine given name derived from the Latin masculine given name Lucius with the meaning ''as of light'' (''born at dawn or daylight'', maybe also ''shiny'', or ''of light complexion''). Alternative spellings are Luci, Luce, Luci ...
, and reinterpretation of older fossil materials, notably
Ramapithecus
''Sivapithecus'' () (syn: ''Ramapithecus)'' is a genus of extinct apes. Fossil remains of animals now assigned to this genus, dated from 12.2 million years old in the Miocene, have been found since the 19th century in the Siwalik Hills of the Ind ...
, showed these younger estimates to be likely correct and have validated the pattern implied initially by Sarich and Wilson's albumin data. Empirical demonstrations that the
molecular clock
The molecular clock is a figurative term for a technique that uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged. The biomolecular data used for such calculations are usually nucleoti ...
principle held among large groups of organisms (through application of the
relative rate test The relative rate test is a genetic comparative test between two ingroups (somewhat closely related species) and an outgroup or “reference species” to compare mutation and evolutionary rates between the species. Each ingroup species is compared ...
) revolutionized the study of
molecular evolution
Molecular evolution is the process of change in the sequence composition of cellular molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins across generations. The field of molecular evolution uses principles of evolutionary biology and population genetics ...
.
Sarich's later work on
race
Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to:
* Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species
* Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
strengthened his reputation as a controversial figure. He applied his earlier work to racial differentiation, which he saw as subgroupings below the level of species. He also argued that the smaller the amount of time required to create a given number of morphological difference, the more selectively significant the differences would necessarily be.
Sarich was a proponent of
sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within t ...
,
evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolv ...
, and that racial differences were real and represented evolved geographic populational differences (on average), which often caused him to be the subject of controversy by activists at Berkeley.
In 1994, Sarich was a signatory of a collective statement titled ''
Mainstream Science on Intelligence
"Mainstream Science on Intelligence" was a public statement issued by a group of researchers of topics associated with intelligence testing. It was published originally in ''The Wall Street Journal'' on December 13, 1994, as a response to criticis ...
'',
[Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994). ]Mainstream Science on Intelligence
"Mainstream Science on Intelligence" was a public statement issued by a group of researchers of topics associated with intelligence testing. It was published originally in ''The Wall Street Journal'' on December 13, 1994, as a response to criticis ...
. ''Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', p A18. written by
Linda Gottfredson
Linda Susanne Gottfredson (née Howarth; born 1947) is an American psychologist and writer. She is professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of I ...
and published in the ''
Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''. Sarich also wrote a defense of ''
The Bell Curve
''The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life'' is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by b ...
''.
After retirement from Berkeley, he occasionally lectured in anthropology at the
University of Auckland
, mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work
, established = 1883; years ago
, endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021)
, budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021)
, chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant
, vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...
, New Zealand for a number of years. At the time of his death he was living in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
with his daughter, her partner, and grandson.
Criticism
Some of Sarich's teachings were criticized by some students and faculty, who argued they believed they were not based in science, and his critics said some of his statements were demeaning to women, nonwhites and homosexuals.
Other students defended him against these charges, however, and defended his teaching.
In an interview with ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
,'' Sarich agreed with his critics, who stated that there was little or no scientific basis for his claims about homosexuality, or on the relationship that he was then teaching of brain size to intelligence. He told the ''Times'' there seems to be a correlation but "there is not a lot of evidence to support that theory because there isn't a lot of research done on the subject."
With respect to his discussions on homosexuality, he told the ''Times'' "I have to admit that there isn't a lot of foundation behind that. In discussions it was clear that my students had more experience and were more heartfelt about the homosexual issues, and I had to agree with them."
Bibliography
*Sarich VM, Wilson AC. Immunological time scale for hominid evolution. ''Science'' 158, 1967, p. 1200-1203.
*Sarich VM, Miele F. ''
Race: The Reality of Human Differences.'' Westview Press (2004).
*Sarich VM. The Final Taboo. ''Skeptic'' (Altadena, CA) January 1, 2000. Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Page: 38
*Sarich VM, Dolhinow P. ''Background for man; readings in physical anthropology'' ASIN: B00005VHM2
*
*
Notes
References
*
External links
Vincent Sarich biography by Kozue Takahashi via
Minnesota State University
Minnesota State University, Mankato (MNSU, MSU, or Minnesota State) is a public university in Mankato, Minnesota, United States. It is Minnesota's second-largest university and has over 123,000 living alumni worldwide. Founded in 1868, it is t ...
In Memorium: Vincent Matthew Sarich
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarich, Vincent
1934 births
2012 deaths
American paleoanthropologists
Illinois Institute of Technology alumni
Race and intelligence controversy
Proponents of scientific racism
University of Auckland faculty
University of California, Berkeley alumni
University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty