The Intelligence of the Evenk/Tungus of the Russian Far East

The Evenk, also known as the Tungus, are indigenous people of the Russian Far East, Mongolia and China (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi & Piazza, 1996, p.227). They number around 60,000 of which about half are in Russia and the remaining half in China and Mongolia. Their language belongs to the eastern branch of the Altaic languages, although today many of them speak Russian, Chinese or Mongolian. Anthropologically, they are a Mongoloid/Arctic people most closely related genetically to the Chukchi and Koryak peoples in the Far East of Siberia (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi & Piazza, 1994). Most of the Evenk/Tungus in Russia live in the Evenk Auvtonomous Okrug, the Primorsky Krai and the Kharbarovsk regions.An early study of the intelligence of the Evenk/Tungus was carried out in 1929 by Bulanow (?. ???a?o?) (1930) and published in Russian. The study consisted of 6 children aged 10-15 years tested with the Binet test, 17 children aged 7-19 years tested with the Russian Rossolimo test, and 15 children with the American Pintner test. The mean IQ on the Binet test was 70. IQs were not given for the other samples, but their intelligence was described as substantially lower than that of ethnically European Russian children. Bulanow reported that the Evenk/Tungus children and adults had great difficulty understanding the concepts of measurement and number. He reported that when Evenk/Tungus children were questioned about devices for measurement, they did not have the concept of an absolute unit of measurement. They thought that the unit changed with the material measured. Bulanow reported further that when he asked Evenk/Tungus adults how many children they had "It was difficult, almost impossible, to get from parents precise information as to how many of their children were alive, how many of their children had died, what was the age of their children, and so on." (p. 198).The observations reported in Bulanow's study match those of Aleksandr Luria with illiterate villagers in Central Asia during the 1930s (Luria, 1976). Results of this kind have been conceptualized as a failure of unschooled or poorly schooled children to progress through the Piagetian stages of cognitive development (Oesterdiekhoff, 2014). Bulanow's study and other early work on the intelligence of ethnic and racial minorities in Russia have been reviewed by Grigoriev& Lynn (2009).These studies came to an end in 1936 when intelligence testing was banned in the Soviet Union. It was not until the 1960s and early 1970s that this prohibition was progressively relaxed and research on intelligence in Russia was resumed.A study of the intelligence of the Evenk/Tungus in China has been published by Lynn & Cheng (2014). This gave Standard Progressive Matrices scores for 90 12-14 year olds compared with the same number of Han Chinese. The Evenk/Tungus scored 9.4 IQ points lower than the Han and their British IQ was estimated at 96.5. This is considerably higher than the estimate given by Bulanow (1930). To provide evidence on the intelligence of the Evenk/Tungus in Russia today, we present data for a sample in Russia.MethodThe sample consisted of all children attending the school in the Evenk/Tungus village of Krasny Yar. The village is located in the Primorsky Krai region about 400 km north of Vladivostok and 90 km from the nearest small town of Luchegorsk, and has a population of 691 people. The village is quite isolated, roads between it and other villages and Luchegorsk are poor. There are no permanent police, fire department, stores or medical services. The villagers speak Russian and have television. Most subsist by hunting, fishing, farming, and gathering of wild plants. There is no Internet connection, only satellite TV.Besides the school, the village has a hospital, kindergarten, art studio and library. The village is often visited by Japanese and Korean researchers, especially by ethnographers. The school in Krasny Yar has a complete teaching staff, the teacher is not the same for each school subject. …