One of the amazing facts in world history is that those of European descent have been responsible for just about every significant invention or discovery in every field of human endeavor for the past 1500 years, from the age of Homer to our own time. This astounding fact was investigated by eminent researcher Charles Murray in 2006 in his book Human Accomplishment. Employing statistical techniques, Murray compiled a list of the 4002 most accomplished men and women of world history He found that 72% of the world’s significant figures in arts and sciences have come from Britain, France, Germany and Italy alone. Murray shows that overall, male Europeans and North Americans are responsible for about 97% of scientific accomplishment from 800 BC to 1950, even though they have always been a small minority of the world’s population. Statistically, when it comes to curing disease, building bridges or devising better modes of transport, Western man is in a league of his own. According to Murray, “What the human species is today, it owes in astonishing degree to what was accomplished in just half a dozen centuries by the peoples of one small portion of the north-western Eurasian land mass.” Isaac Asimov shows much the same thing in his book Chronicles of Science and Discovery, which lists the greatest 1,500 attainments of mankind. The vast majority of Nobel Prizes in the sciences are also held by Europeans. Europeans are obviously a gifted and creative race, and without their talents the world would be a very different and backward place today. To help demonstrate this, history’s greatest scientists are ranked below according to their achievements by non-biased sources, regardless of their ethnicity or gender.

This is the science of healing, which has been in existence since the time of Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine”. According to Science Magazine, the ten greatest medical researchers in world history are:

This is the study of life and living organisms. According to Science Magazine, the ten greatest biologists in world history are:

This is the study of matter and how it changes. According to Science Magazine, the ten greatest chemists in world history are:

The first science studied by man, this is the study of celestial objects. According to Charles Murray, the ten greatest astronomers in world history are:

This is the study of quantity and calculation. According to James Allen, the ten greatest mathematicians in world history are:

Europeans are responsible for the greatest inventions in air, sea and land transportation as well as communications. Some of these are listed below, in no particular order. For each invention, there are usually many contributors, who developed different parts and mechanisms. For example, the steamship includes inventions such as the steam engine and the propeller, also invented by Europeans. For the sake of simplicity, one person is given credit for each invention although he and virtually all of the other contributors to it were also of European descent.

The list of inventions developed by Europeans is too long to list because it includes almost every important gadget invented in the past 4 centuries, but some notable ones that make our lives better are:

The development of the computer and the internet is the result of the efforts of many hundreds of important persons, almost all of whom were of European descent. Computers are made up of different parts, and every part can be considered a separate invention. The first real computer ran on steam and was developed by Charles Babbage in 1822. It wasn’t until a century later that the first digital computer was developed, built by Konrad Zuse in 1936. This led to other machines, which were bulky, slow and prone to glitches. A landmark breakthrough was achieved by William Shockley when he invented the transistor in 1948. This led to a continual line of improved machines that became increasingly powerful, resulting in the personal computer in the mid-1970s and the launching of the Information Age.

There has been much debate about why Europeans have experienced so much success. Europe is just a small part of the world, not particularly rich in resources and was not densely populated. So what enabled Europe to emerge finally on top? In his book entitled The Birth of Europe, medieval historian Robert Lopez posed this question. His answer was “the absence of great invasions for a thousand years.” However, this is not a convincing explanation. Throughout history, Europe has been inundated by continual invasions from the East and South, from the Huns which played an important role in destroying the Roman Empire, to the Turks who overran Southeast Europe and the Mongols, who conquered vast swaths of Eastern Europe before being defeated in Germany.

The first great battle for the survival of the West occurred nearly 2,500 years ago, in 480 B.C. in Greece. Herodotus, the first great Western historian, describes this legendary battle in his History of the Persian War. When the Persians invaded Greece, the Greeks realized that they were outnumbered and needed time to reorganize their forces. They sought to delay the approaching Persians at a narrow mountain pass. The following selection describes a scenario not unlike that which confronts us today: the fear and resignation of the many, the outright treason of some, and the sacrifice of the few who fight valiantly against insurmountable odds. Herodotus wrote:

This inspirational sacrifice of our ancient ancestors at Thermopylae led to a Greek victory over the Persians and permitted Hellenic culture to flourish. The Greeks laid the foundations of Western Civilization, which stands as an unbroken period of development from the ancients to the present day.

Many historians throughout history have believed that the success of a civilization is based on the genetic quality of its population. This is a view held by Arthur de Gobineau, Edward Gibbon and Oswald Spengler. This view was stated well by Queen Victoria’s favorite Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, who declared, “No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key to history and why history is so often confused is that it has been written by men who were ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves . . . Language and religion do not make a race – there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood.” He also stated that, “The racial question is the key to world history… all is race, there is no other truth.” This was a common belief throughout history, found in literature through the ages. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, believed that “it is in the deep traits of race that the fortunes of nations are written.”

Race is an important factor. Nature has designed every species of with unique characteristics, and this holds true for humans as well. Each race has genetic traits that are due to the environment that group evolved in. Europeans, living in an extremely harsh and challenging environment, developed certain intellectual abilities that were essential for them to survive. These abilities were unnecessary for other races living in more mild climates. This difference in brain development is manifested in the unique skull shapes, brain sizes and brain structures of Europeans. However, the measure that is most striking is the difference in IQ. The average IQ for Whites, Hispanics and Blacks when plotted on a bell curve graph are quite different.

As you can see, Whites have an average IQ of 100, substantially greater than Hispanics or African Americans. Due to the way IQs range over a population, this means that Whites are almost 20 times more likely to be gifted than African Americans are, with a similar difference compared to Hispanics. Interestingly, Whites are 53 times more likely to be gifted than blacks in Africa, who have an average IQ of only 70. This is all very significant, because most of the highest achievers in science have a very high IQ. For example, the average IQ of Nobel Prize winners in science is estimated to be over 150.

IQ tests from around the world show that Asians on average have higher IQs than Europeans, and they have always had larger populations. The question therefore arises, why haven’t Asians dominated — economically, culturally, and politically?

Asian culture and knowledge has tended to be stagnant in the past. Adam Smith wrote about China in The Wealth of Nations: “China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have long been stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.”

This can be seen in art and fashion, which show hardly any change from 1000 to 1800 AD. This can also be seen in politics, where the Chinese never really moved beyond believing in an absolute ruler who was in touch with the gods. In the West, the ideal of individual political participation dates back to the Greeks, and is present in Europe in the Middle Ages. Yet ideas about constitutions restricting what government may do, representative government, or direct democracy never arose in Chinese society.

Also interesting, before Communism China never attempted to go beyond a society of a small elite with immense wealth that left the vast majority in grinding poverty. There is no Chinese tradition of doubting the justice or legitimacy of such a society. When Europeans began to gain first-hand experience of China from the 17th century onwards, it was common to remark on the tremendous disparities of wealth. There was nothing that resembled the organized charitable concern for the poor found within the Catholic Church, let alone a formal legal obligation to the needy, such as the English Poor Law of 1601.

Interestingly, the Chinese were great compilers of what we would call encyclopaedias. They delighted in recording what was already known or thought, but had little interest in investigating what was not known or might be thought. The same can be said for other Asian nations such as Japan and Korea, which raises some interesting questions. Why didn’t the Asian nations make the jump from trial-and-error technology to true science? Why did they show so little interest in advancing philosophy? Why did they never develop a political system more sophisticated than that of the god-Emperor? Why was the idea of political participation, so widespread in Europe in both the ancient and the late mediaeval world, absent in China? And why did Europe overtake China and surge ahead so many centuries ago?

It is unlikely that this was due to luck, because China has been a sophisticated society for several thousand years. Part of the reason probably has to do with personality traits. Compared to whites, Asians are more cautious, less impulsive, less aggressive, less sociable, less psychopathic, and have lower self-regard (the same can be said about whites compared to blacks). Asians also have lower levels of testosterone compared to whites (who have less testosterone than blacks), and testosterone is closely associated with aggressiveness, risk-taking, and criminality. Asians also tend to show very little antisocial behavior, with low crime rates. They have a tendency to follow the rules and not to call attention to themselves either as a group or as individuals seems to fit the Asian personality.

When they are a minority in high-IQ, Western societies, Asians tend to fill technical posts that favor higher IQs, or engage in business, much of which is conducted within their own group. They make relatively little headway in areas that require the highest level of “people skills,” such as politics or advocacy groups. They are excellent accountants, computer technicians, and engineers — these are professions in which their natural abilities blossom — but they do not distinguish themselves in professions that require verbal gifts and gregariousness: politician, comedian, lawyer.

Asians have had the invaluable example of European industry, science, and general cultural heritage, and have made much better use of it than any other non-Western racial group. However, their record is patchy, and they tend to imitate rather than create. Japan has been able to duplicate the technology of the West but has not been able to surpass it. Asians have enthusiastically copied the architecture of the West and have even been willing to tear down many fine examples of indigenous architecture. The Japanese, in particular, are famous for imitating white culture, from Beethoven to the Beatles. Asian Harry Potter fans are among the most frenzied in the world. Yet they have a dearth of original creations.

Another reason for the difference in achievement is may be related to the IQs of each ethnic group. Researchers believe that there are many more gifted Europeans than Asians. This is because there is a great deal of variation among Whites, with larger numbers of gifted and larger numbers of retarded individuals. On a graph, the bell curve for Whites has a gentle slope. In contrast, Asians have a higher average IQ, but they are tightly bunched

around this average. This means that on a graph, Asians have a very steep bell curve, meaning they have fewer dummies, but also fewer geniuses. Professor Arthur Jensen explains that in technical terms, the “standard deviation” for white males is 18, while that for Asians is closer to 12.

The gifted are rare in all populations, but in comparison to other races, they are much more common among Europeans. Various studies have shown that the number of highly gifted Europeans is many times greater than what would be expected statistically. For example, for those with an IQ of 196 or more, there are 3,000 times more than you would expect among Whites. This helps to explain why we have seen so few great geniuses such as Beethoven, Sir Isaac Newton or Michelangelo come from China or Japan, which combined have always had very large numbers of people as well as high quality education systems.

Another important genetic difference between Europeans and Asians is our brain structure. On IQ tests, Asians tend to demonstrate strong “left brain” spatial abilities that are associated with math and science. However, they on average show weak “right brain” verbal abilities which are associated with language. In contrast, Europeans tend to be evenly balanced between left and right brain capacity. The right-side of the brain is strongly associated with creativity. A study of 64 of America’s most eminent scientists and scholars demonstrated that creativity is strongly linked with verbal ability (right-brain activity). Because East Asians have such strong spatial ability, they typically do very well in mathematics and the sciences. However, they also tend to demonstrate low verbal skills and a lack of creativity. This is probably the main reason why we see so few breakthrough inventions, great novels and other highly creative works coming out of Asia.

It is appropriate for all peoples to remember the achievements and deeds of their ancestors, and feel a sense of pride in what they accomplished. We have a very special tie with them, as we share their very DNA. Had they not managed to survive their harsh Stone Age environments, or had they fallen to foreign invasions, we would not be here today. Each European child is part of this legacy, part of an unbroken line that extends back in time to the very first people of our kind. Parents may not realize it, but every newborn carries the genes of great European leaders within him and has their potential; the blood of heroic men such as Charlemagne, Alfred the Great or perhaps even the dreaded viking warlord, Sven Forkbeard.