Henry Harpending

Henry Cosad Harpending (January 13, 1944 – April 3, 2016) was an American anthropologist and distinguished professor at the University of Utah, best known for his 2009 book The 10,000 Year Explosion, co-authored with Gregory Cochran. Educated at Hamilton College and Harvard University, his career included faculty positions at Penn State and the University of New Mexico.

Harpending worked primarily in biological anthropology and population genetics, but also conducted ethnographic fieldwork with the !Kung and Herero peoples of Southern Africa. His work in population genetics pioneered the study of the relationship between genetics and geography.

Harpending was married twice and had three children. He died in 2016. Harpending also developed the approach of analyzing populations using R-matrix 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 (Botswana, Namibia) and spoke the !Kung language. In 1981, while with the University of New Mexico, 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, 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.

Ashkenazi intelligence In the 2005 paper "Natural History Of Ashkenazi Intelligence", Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Harpending suggest that the high average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews 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.

The 10,000 Year Explosion In The 10,000 Year Explosion, which he co-authored with Gregory Cochran, 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 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, Canavan disease, Niemann–Pick disease, Gaucher's disease, familial dysautonomia, Bloom syndrome, Fanconi anemia, cystic fibrosis and mucolipidosis IV) is due to the historically isolated population of Jews in Europe.

Views on race The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented Harpending's works and statements on race, noting his association with white supremacist 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 Sub-Saharan Black Africans, Papua New Guineans, and "Baltimore Blacks" possess the same genetic temperamental predispositions which he said are characterized by "violence, laziness, and a preference for 'mating instead of parenting'", while Europeans and East Asians "have evolved higher intelligence and 'tend to be more disciplined than people who take life for granted'";

Harpending once stated that people of Sub-Saharan Black African ancestry do not have the same genetic propensity for "hard work" as Europeans and East Asians 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 and Richard Spencer, described by the Anti-Defamation League as a "racist gathering".

Personal life 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.

Selected publications