It’s not exactly a secret that both Nazis and Communists killed and persecuted intellectuals. The question is, did this have a meaningful impact on the demographics of countries occupied by Nazis and Communists? This answer is a clear yes, in my opinion. To understand why, the first component is that many modern humans are a 70% match on the maternal line with Denisovans, as measured using mtDNA. See my paper, A New Model of Computational Genomics [1], generally. This is not unique to Denisovans, and in fact, basically all Iberian Roma and all Papuans are a 96% match to Heidelbergensis, and many people globally are a 96% match to Neanderthals.  See [1] generally. However, approximately a majority of people have no real relationship to any archaic humans, beyond chance (i.e., about 25% of the genome in common). All of this is based upon the dataset linked to in [1], which at this point consists of 600 complete human mtDNA genomes, all taken from the NIH Database. The most current dataset is linked to below, and an older version is linked to in [1].

The root observation is that many Jews (both Ashkenazi and Sephardic) are a 70% match to Denisovans, which you can see in the chart above. Note that all of the population acronyms (e.g., KN stands for Kenya) can be found at the end of [1]. Because so many Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and many Jews are technically Denisovan, we would expect countries occupied by Nazi Germany to have fewer Denisovans than countries that were not occupied by Nazi Germany. This is exactly what you find, in that Belarus and Poland have absolutely no Denisovan people, and Germany has almost none. Germany, Poland, and Belarus contain matches to Ashkenazi Jews (at 90% of the genome), which you can see in the chart below, suggesting that the Denisovan Jews were disproportionately impacted by the Holocaust. That is, even though some people in these countries are genetically Jewish, you don’t find any Denisovans, suggesting that Denisovans generally were nearly annihilated during the Holocaust. Moreover, Finland avoided occupation by both Germans and Russians, and did not actively persecute Jews, and as you can see in the first chart above, they still have a sizable Denisovan population. In contrast, Russia has no relationship to Denisovans, and the Russians also persecuted Jews, separate from the Holocaust. Though we cannot know using this data alone what the populations of Europe looked like prior to the Holocaust, it’s at least consistent with the assumption that Denisovan populations were disproportionately impacted by the Holocaust. This is not surprising, given that many Jews are related to Denisovans. However, Jewish populations seem to persist today genetically in all of these countries, which you can see below. This suggests a disproportionate impact on Denisovans that is independent of being Jewish.

Interestingly, Taiwan and Mongolia also have significant Denisovan populations, which you can see in the first chart above. China has no meaningful Denisovan population, and again, Russia has none at all. This suggests at least the possibility that people of Denisovan ancestry actively fled communist revolutions in China and Russia, heading to Taiwan and Mongolia. Now, it is simply not credible to claim that ethnically Taiwanese and Mongolian people are somehow Jewish, especially not in the numbers implied by the chart above. Moreover, it’s not credible to claim that they knew that they were of Denisovan ancestry either. The more rational explanation is that the persecution of intellectuals disproportionately impacted individuals of Denisovan heritage. One sensible explanation is that Denisovans are simply more intelligent than most people. If this is true, then the average IQ in Sweden and Norway (where there isn’t much of a Denisovan population) should be lower than it is in Finland (where there is a sizable Denisovan population).

It turns out this is true, and drastically so. Moreover, the average IQ’s in Norway and Sweden are almost exactly the same, whereas it’s drastically higher in Finland. See the chart above, where Sweden and Norway are at the bottom, just below the U.S., and Finland is ranked 8th, globally, at the top. Russia is slightly off-screen. You simply cannot explain this differential with economics, political dysfunction, or geography, as all three countries are rich, high-functioning, socialist, capitalist, democracies, that have plainly similar geographies, and very similar demographics, save for Finland’s anomalous Denisovan population. Moreover, the average IQ is also higher in Taiwan than it is in China. This all suggests the possibility that by simply killing intellectuals, the Nazis and Communists accidentally killed off our living ancestors, that are also more intelligent than them. The barbarism of the Nazis also sent a ton of scientists to the U.S., so thanks for that. The image above is courtesy of World Population Review.

Here’s the current dataset:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zwt1bcqqmqkleca/mtDNA.zip?dl=0