Oleg:
Actually, there is every reason to elieve there is a genetic component to
that as well, but it's too long to get into here. The difference, however,
is that the Kenyan example provides statistical evidence, but that is only a
small fraction of the evidence....the rest is based on documented anatomical
and physiological differences between populations, which also points to the
same conclusion that bio-genetics are critical factors in understanding
what's going on.
On 4/12/01 12:12 PM, "Oleg Shpyrko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Statistics is a pretty interesting tool for making this type of arguments.
>
> Example:
>
> Over the past 75 years the world chess crown belonged to a russian (and by
> "russian" I mean the broad definition of the term) 70 times out of 75.
> The chance of this happening by "accident" is even lower than
> the chances of a kenyan winning Boston 10 years in a row.
> To put some numbers together, it's about (.03)^70, or roughly
> 10^(-105) or 1 in
> 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000,000,000
> ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
>
> Give or take a few orders of magnitude :)
> Someone please double check the number of zeros.
>
> For comparison, your number is "only" 10^(-36). My scenario is 10^(-69)
> times less likely to happen by "accident"!
>
> According to your logic, this should suggest that russian people have
> specific "chess" gene. I should also add that chess is not even considered
> to be among top 20 most popular sports among russians. Hockey, soccer,
> basketball, athletics, swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, etc. are much more
> popular.
>
> Why are we "afraid to talk" about THAT? Just an idea for your next book.
>
> Oleg.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jon Entine
> Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 1:15 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: t-and-f: Why Kalenjins Win the Boston Marathon
>
>
> Here's some background for those trying to understand the bio-cultural
> reasons for Kenyan/Kalenjin dominance at Boston.
>
> For the empiricist in you, the last 10 Boston Marathons (male) have been won
> by a Kenyan. More specifically, all the winners have been Kalenjins, a
> loosely-named group of approximately 1.5 million people. The chances of that
> happening by chance, based on population statistics alone, is 1 in
> 1,048,576,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 . Or, as a decimal:
> 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001
>
> For those who say it's because of social channeling, it's intriguing to note
> that running is a poor third in sports popularity Kenya, well-behind the
> national obsession of soccer (which they are not very competitive at
> compared to athletes from West Africa -- they don't have the body type for
> it) and cricket (at which they are decidedly mediocre as well).
>
> On the flip side, the best Kenyan time (or time by any East African) in the
> 100 meters is 10.28 seconds, about 5,000 on the all time list while the best
> time by a person of West African ancestry is 9.79 seconds.
>
> Of course it's ALL because of social conditioning and population genetics
> has nothing to do with it.
>
> Perhaps the most persuasive prima facie case suggesting that sports success
> is not a purely environmental phenomena may be found in the real-life
> laboratory of the Nandi Hills, Kenya and more specifically the Kalenjin,
> represents a mind-boggling concentration of athletic talent. The Kalenjin
> represent roughly three-quarters of Kenya¹s world-class runners (half of
> whom are from one tribe, the Nandi). Hundreds of years ago, what African
> historians refer to as a proto-Kalenjin population migrated from the Nilotic
> core area northwest of Lake Turkana to the Mt. Elgon area, where the group
> fragmented and moved to its present locations in the highlands. This is the
> home of the Nandi, part of the Kalenjins.
>
> The historical concentration of top runners among the Nandi, and the more
> recent emergence of top runners in the more northerly groups such as the
> Keiyo, Marakwet, and Tugen, could understandably be linked to the influence
> of the internationally renowned running program at St. Patrick¹s in Iten,
> which is close to those three groups. However, these trends only reconfirm
> overall Kalenjin dominance. There certainly appears to be a common genetic
> thread that runs through the amorphous Kalenjin population. According to
> John Manners, who has written two books on Kenyan running, there feedback
> loop of the region¹s evolutionary history and East African culture is well
> established.
>
> Intriguingly, one of the few non-Kalenjin tribes to make a mark on the
> in-ternational running scene is the Kisii, with whom the Kalenjin have had
> especially intense interaction over the past several centuries. The Da-tooga
> (also called the Dadog) in Tanzania, who speak Southern Nilotic, a language
> very close to that of the Kalenjin, are one of two small tribes in that
> country to turn out world-class distance runners in any numbers. The Sabei
> in Uganda, who are Kalenjin (they live adjacent to their Kalen-jin cousins
> on the other side of the border), dominate Uganda¹s increas-ingly successful
> international cross-country teams, even though they constitute a tiny
> proportion of the country¹s population. And on a much broader, less
> meaningful scale, the Eastern Cushitic speakers who domi-nate the formidable
> distance running corps of Ethiopia have some distant connection to the
> Kalenjin, according to anthropologists.
>
> There is little doubt that for many centuries the Kalenjin have been a
> substantially stable population group, however mixed in origin, not just
> unrelated peoples who have come to speak the same language. ³The fact that
> this tribe of about three million is able to dominate world distance running
> is so astonishing as to beggar purely cultural or environ-mental
> explanations,² writers Manners. ³That the various Kalenjin groups originated
> inde-pendently and somehow adopted the same language and customs is both
> counterintuitive and contrary to the evidence. The only reason I can think
> for propounding such a theory is essentially a political oneto try to
> undercut potentially divisive notions of ancient ethnic or blood tiesan
> admirable sentiment, maybe, but bad history.
>
> Kenya is a melting pot. All evidencelinguistic, archaeological, and
> folkloricsuggests that the three million people who today call themselves
> Kalenjin originated as a small group of pastoral nomads and sheepherders in
> the Nilotic core area of what is now southern Sudan, eventually migrating
> south to the Mount Elgon region. It is almost universally acknowledged that
> the current population arrived within the past 2,000 years or so.
>
> Pastoralist Cushites arrived from southern Ethiopia, displacing and
> absorbing a very sparse population presumed to have been Khoisan.
> Along the way, small populations of perhaps hundreds of people who appear to
> have been indigenous forest dwellers, commonly known as Okiek or Dorobo,
> were partially engulfed by the migrating Kalenjin and adopted their own
> variants of the language. The likely course of events is that the incoming
> populations split and that language differences among their descendants who
> now speak Bantu, Nilotic, and Cushitic, resulted from geo-graphical
> separation and incidental contact with other groups.
>
> Centuries later, sometime in the next second millennium, it is believed they
> dis-persed to their present homeland along the rim of the Rift Valley
> northwest of Lake Tur-kana, with some spreading into and across the valley
> when their movement was not ob-structed by the Masai. Nilotic people pressed
> in from the north, intermarrying with the Cushites and bringing their own
> customs, particularly the ritual of circumcision.
>
> The principal groups that today constitute the Kalenjin ³tribe² all appear
> to have been segments of the core population from the Mount Elgon area. By
> the 1600s, as the Bantu expanded eastward from Central West Africa, the
> Kalenjin retreated to their highland strongholds, breaking into numerous
> smaller groups, mostly cattle rustlers and warriors, who defended against
> outsiders but sometimes quarreled among themselves. Raiding parties would
> celebrate victories with a ceremonial drink of milk mixed with cow¹s blood.
> One of the largest of the native groups came to be known as the Chemwal, the
> Kalenjin word meaning ³raid cattle,² or those who steal. It is the
> forerunner of the Nandi, who have been a distinct tribe for almost three
> centuries.
> --
> Jon Entine
> RuffRun
> 6178 Grey Rock Rd.
> Agoura Hills, CA 91301
> (818) 991-9803 [FAX] 991-9804
> http://www.jonentine.com
>
--
Jon Entine
RuffRun
6178 Grey Rock Rd.
Agoura Hills, CA 91301
(818) 991-9803 [FAX] 991-9804
http://www.jonentine.com
