Castes and evolutionary stasis

The Burakumin of Japan, the Paekchong of Korea, and the Cagots of France

Yakuza in Tokyo, 2007 (Wikicommons - Jorge)

Over time, a caste will diverge more and more from its surrounding population, not because it has changed but because the latter has. It may thus provide a glimpse into how the surrounding population thought and behaved centuries ago.

In previous posts I’ve argued that cognitive ability has evolved at different rates in different human populations. Over the past millennium it has evolved faster among the Igbo of Nigeria, Ashkenazi Jews and, more broadly, Europeans (Frost, 2022a; Frost, 2022b; Frost, 2022c). But the reverse, too, is possible. A population may evolve more slowly, or not at all.

Such stasis happens when a closed group is shunned by its surrounding population while enjoying a monopoly over certain forms of work. Its members have little incentive to do better at what they do, since no one else can move into their niche. They can thus perpetuate themselves indefinitely while not having to change in any particular way.

A very different situation prevailed in late medieval and post-medieval England (Clark, 2007; Clark, 2009a; Clark, 2009b). There, the middle class continually produced surplus individuals who had to move down the social ladder, with the result that more and more lower-class lineages were at least partly middle-class by ancestry. This is not the situation in caste societies. If a suitable position is not available within your caste, you remain single and wait until one opens up.

Because a caste is a closed gene pool where the pressure of selection maintains the status quo, it may preserve mental and behavioral traits that have disappeared elsewhere. It will thus diverge more and more from its surrounding population because the latter continues to change while it does not.

I will illustrate such evolutionary stasis through three examples: the Burakumin of Japan, the Paekchong of Korea, and the Cagots of France.

The Burakumin of Japan

Although the Japanese are often considered socially homogeneous, they do have a distinct caste, the Burakumin, who were officially an “ignoble class” until 1871 and who descend mostly from Japanese whose work involved the taking of life or contact with dead bodies, such as tanning, butchery, leather making, capital punishment, and preparation of corpses for burial. Such work was deemed unclean, as a document from 1558 warned:

To witness the death of a cow or horse and then to dispose of the carcass brings one day’s pollution. To skin the hide of the carcass brings five days pollution on oneself (Neary, 1989, p. 14; also see Price, 1966, p. 18).

In addition to people who had contact with dead bodies, ‘unclean’ Japanese also included beggars, criminals, street-sweepers, and other low-status groups (Price, 1966, pp. 18-19).

Although the Burakumin probably go as far back as the Nara period (645-794), the first recurring references to them appear during the Edo period (1603-1867), when they were described as being the lowest Japanese class. At that time they lived in separate settlements and were shunned (Neary, 1989, pp. 12-29; Price 1966). Their work was nonetheless necessary, and the authorities ensured their survival by providing them with monopolies, tax-free use of land, and official recognition of their leadership (Price, 1966, p. 17).

Because the Burakumin survived as essentially the same population from one generation to the next, they might provide a glimpse into how the Japanese thought and behaved centuries ago. That hypothesis was articulated by an American ethnographer, June Gordon, when she entered a community of Burakumin and was struck by their open display of feelings, emotions, and thoughts:

This is a community unlike most others in contemporary Japan. … Do the Burakumin, people of the buraku, in fact represent an echoing back to a traditional Japanese past when the distinction between tatemae (what is displayed) and honne (what is felt) was not so rigidly enforced? (Gordon, 2017, p. 265)

In that past, the Japanese were also different in other ways. Men had to use force to defend themselves and their families. Young males preferred to socialize with each other in small, loosely hierarchical groups to control local territory and to raid neighboring territories. Literacy was rare, as was the ability to create, process, and store abstract information. Finally, the focus was more on the present. The future was too uncertain, particularly how long one would live and how long an agreement would be enforceable.

Present-day Japan

Almost two-thirds of Burakumin say they have never encountered discrimination, and about 73% now marry outside their group (Kristof, 1995). Much has also been done to improve their neighborhoods:

In the 1960's, the buraku were immediately recognizable as slums: dilapidated hovels leaned over tiny alleys, open sewers carried waste water into the rivers, and old people blinded by contagious disease sat hopelessly in the open doorways. Now that has all changed. A torrent of Government investment has improved the buraku so they are no longer slums. (Kristof, 1995)

Increasingly, the average Japanese person is no longer even aware that the Burakumin exist:

Most Japanese clam up in horror when the topic is broached, and so most young Japanese know far more about discrimination against blacks in America than about discrimination against burakumin in Japan.

Some junior high school students in the town of Omiya, where there are many buraku, looked puzzled when the topic of burakumin came up.

“Who are they?” a teen-age girl asked. “I've never heard of them.” (Kristof, 1995)

Yet Burakumin still feel alienated from Japanese society, not so much because it discriminates against them but rather because it promotes domesticity, self-discipline, and intellectual pursuits. Other forms of social expression and affiliation seem preferable, such as those of the crime syndicates—known collectively as the Yakuza. In the western region, Burakumin form up to 70% of Yakuza members, but only 2% of the general population (Thornton and Endo, 1992, pp. 172-173). The number two man in the Yakuza claimed that 60% of all members were Burakumin (Suganuma, 2006). That sort of lifestyle appeals to youths:

Social workers say crime is a disproportionate problem among young burakumin, but the issue is so sensitive that no Japanese scholars have conducted research on it. One rare statistical study, conducted by Americans in the 1960's, found that burakumin youths were three times as likely as non-buraku youths to be arrested for crimes. (Kristof, 1995)

Behavioral differences show up in other areas of life:

Yet average income for buraku families is still only about 60 percent of the national average, and social problems are proving to be far more persistent than discrimination.

Buraku leaders acknowledge that alcoholism is a disproportionate problem in their communities. Poverty and alcohol, in turn, weaken the family in the buraku.

Single parents are almost twice as common in the buraku as in the nation as a whole. Five percent of burakumin are on welfare, seven times the rate in the overall population. (Kristof,, 1995)

At school, their achievement scores have remained nearly one standard deviation below those of other Japanese:

According to research on Buraku pupil/students' scholastic ability conducted in the post-war period, nearly 1 standard deviation difference in achievement scores was found between Burakumin and non-Burakumin pupil/students regardless of when and where the research was conducted. This meta-analysis on Buraku pupil/students' scholastic ability leads us to conclude that the relative difference in scholastic achievements between the Burakumin and non-Burakumin pupil/student has been maintained to a considerable degree through the post-war period. (BLHRRI, 1997)

That gap may persist because of low ability, low interest, or both. For most experts, the cause is apathy and lack of self-esteem (Kristof 1995). Much progress has been made in keeping young Burakumin at school, but even there the gap has not fully closed:

Truancy rates in elementary school in 1960 were 12 times as high for buraku children as for others. Now they are twice as high.

Burakumin have almost caught up with their peers in the proportion who graduate from high school, a tremendous achievement. But only about 24 percent of burakumin go to college, compared with 40 percent of other Japanese. (Kristof, 1995)

The American literature often asserts that IQ scores have risen dramatically among Burakumin immigrants to the United States, but Jason Malloy has found that claim to be unsupported:

I often see media assertions like Steve Olson in The Atlantic: “Yet when the Buraku emigrate to the United States, the IQ gap between them and other Japanese vanishes.” This claim is somewhat apocryphal. There is no data for Burakumin in the US. False claims about US IQ data have mutated second-hand from John Ogbu who claimed a study showed that the Buraku immigrants here “do slightly better in school than the other Japanese immigrants”. The book chapter Ogbu references for this claim (Ito 1966) however, is by a pseudonymous author who relied strictly on gossip from non-outcast Japanese communities in California to surmise how the outcasts here might be performing. The author’s informants believed the US outcasts were more attractive, more fair-skinned, and made more money. Though—as a testament to Ogbu’s immaculate scholarship—the author reported no gossip about how these Burakumin performed in school. (Cochran, 2011)

Why do gaps persist?

Burakumin deviate from Japanese norms not only in educational achievement but also in criminality, salary income, alcohol abuse, and family stability. Such gaps are said to be legacies of discrimination that should wither away as discrimination itself withers away. That does seem to be happening in some areas of life, but not in others. Although Burakumin children are staying longer in school, they are not doing better.

We should remember that it was not the Burakumin who diverged from mainstream Japanese but rather the latter who diverged from them. Thrift, sexual restraint, delayed gratification and other middle-class values gradually became the values of Japanese in general, except for the Burakumin. By the Edo period (1603-1867), the behavioral divergence was so great that the authorities felt it necessary to segregate them (Neary, 1989, p. 16). A key factor was privatization of land ownership:

Until the end of the sixteenth century, it had been possible for senmin [the “lowly people”] to be absorbed into the peasant class by developing new land or claiming abandoned fields. But following the land survey carried out between 1585 and 1598 on the orders of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the peasant was tied to his plot of land and nearly all existing arable land was apportioned to a peasant farmer. With land rights fixed, it was no longer possible for senmin to be absorbed into the main communities. (Neary, 1989, p. 16)

The new social and economic environment created a positive feedback loop. As mainstream society pulled away from the Burakumin, public pressure increased to segregate them, thus fueling the mental and behavioral divergence. The Burakumin were no longer adapting to the changes in mainstream culture—not only the increase in cognitive demands but also the pacification of social relations, the lengthening of the time horizon, and the repression of outward emotion.

Meanwhile, mainstream Japanese were adapting. They adapted initially by pushing the bounds of their phenotype—by doing more with their existing capacities and abilities. In doing so, they provided natural selection with the template for a new genotype. Selection favored those who were better at performing the new tasks. New patterns of mind and behavior thus became more and more hardwired. That is how gene-culture coevolution works.

Thus, the divergence between the two groups was cultural at first and then increasingly genetic. With the decline in discrimination since the late nineteenth century, there has been some closing of the gap between the Burakumin and mainstream society. But a gap still remains, not so much because discrimination is still present, but rather because the remaining gap is largely genetic in origin.

The Paekchong of Korea

Like Japan with its Burakumin, Korea once had its own despised caste: the Paekchong. Today, they are no longer an identifiable group, and even their name is largely unknown to young Koreans (Rhim, 1974). As late as the mid-twentieth century, however, they still numbered over 50,000, with most living in separate districts (Passin 1956).

The Paekchong were considered behaviorally different and, for that reason, were segregated:

The Paekchong had to live in segregated communities not only by popular custom, but also by law, since the 15th century. According to the provisions of the Compilations of National Laws known as the Kyongguk-taejon, the Paekchong were limited to residence in only certain areas of the capital as well as in certain areas throughout the provinces. The rationale for these laws was that the Paekchong were originally vicious and uncivilized, and they enjoyed killing animals. They were, therefore, kept apart from the ordinary people in order to maintain public peace and public morals. (Rhim, 1974)

That view appears in the recollections of a Korean from a small farming town:

“I remember very well,” he told me, “that when our parents scolded us for improper behavior, they used to call us 'paekchong’. […] We thought of them as vulgar, unrefined. Not many of them went to school however, because even though there was no law against it, somehow they didn't seem to have ambitions of that kind, or else they were afraid [of being insulted or beaten up].” […] “One of the things I remember especially is that they used to kill stray dogs. These were the people who would catch your favorite pet dog if you weren't careful and cut him up. I remember one of them used to carry a long curved knife, rather than a straight one, and I was always afraid of it. He used to steal around the streets carrying a heavy stick and searching for dogs. When he caught one, he would beat it to death on the spot, its blood dripping right in front of our eyes. You can imagine how we felt about that. I still cannot get over the feeling that a man who kills dogs is the worst kind of human being there is. Killing cattle may be unpleasant, but it is a necessary profession.” (Passin, 1956)

History

The Paekchong first entered Korean history as nomads called by such names as Kolisuchae or Yangsuchuk:

In an entry in the annals of the Koryo dynasty for the year 1217, there appears an important new term—the kolisuchae—referring to the outcastes of the Silla period “The kolisuchae,” it says, “are the remnants of the Paekche tribes that T'aejoe (the founder of the Koryo dynasty in 918) found it hard to subdue. They have always been unregistered and exempt from tribute, and they like the nomadic life, changing their residence frequently. They engage only in hunting or in the making and selling of willow baskets. Also dancing girls come from these families.” (Passin, 1956)

[…] before the 13th century, the kolisuchae had specialized in basketmaking, hunting, and what might be called “entertaining”, that is acting, prostitution, etc. But by the beginning of the 13th century, hunting becomes less important, and slaughtering comes to the fore as a distinctive occupation of theirs. (Passin, 1956)

Being an alien people from Tartar, the Yangsuchuk were hardly assimilated into the general population. Consequently, they wandered through the marshlands along the northwest coast. They were engaged in the making and selling of willow baskets. They were also proficient in slaughtering animals and had a liking for hunting. Selling their wives and daughters was part of their way of life. (Rhim, 1974)

They may have later absorbed other nomadic groups that drifted into the Korean Peninsula, particularly during the Mongol invasions:

[…] even these scholars who see the connection between the Paekchong and the Hangsuchuk of Koryo period do not argue that all of today's Paekchong are descendants of the Yangsuchuk. They maintain that the alien tribe known as the Yangsuchuk is part of today's Paekchong. Since the Koryo period, other alien peoples, such as the Manchurian Kitans and foreign captives taken during the wars, might have entered the Yangsuchuk. (Rhim, 1974)

Beginning in the fifteenth century, the authorities tried to integrate the nomads by forbidding them to wander, by making them take up farming, and by forcing them to intermarry. This was when they were renamed Paekchong (‘common people’) to assist their integration:

Some time in the reign of King Sejong (1419-1450), it is ordered that the outcastes be called paekchong, that is “common people”, and that they be registered, settled down into fixed communities, transformed into agriculturalists, and even made to intermarry with the common people. But in spite of the efforts of the authorities, the outcastes themselves fail to cooperate—we read constant complaints of their backsliding, refusal to engage in farming, thievery, nomadism, etc.—and the common people and officials both refuse to accept them into their ranks. An extremely revealing entry of 1442 notes: “... it has been ordered that the name of the hwachae-chaein be changed to the paekchong, but officials and the people call them the 'new paekchong' and look down upon them, saying that they engage in hunting.” (Passin, 1956)

[…] But all along there are disquieting signs that the new policy is not working. The people will not accept them, they do not intermarry, they do not give up their bad habits of wandering, thieving, and illegal slaughtering. In 1435, we read that “most of the thefts in Kyonggyib are committed by the new paekchong. They rely on their horses and do no agriculture.” The Governor (Kamsa) of Ch'ungch'ong requests in 1437 that the “new paekchong”, who are causing a great deal of disturbance in his locality, be restrained. They enter the capital illegally and commit robberies, and they also slaughter cattle illegally. […] By 1451, we learn from the statement of a prison official that of the 380-some thieves and murderers held in all the provinces, half are chaein-paekchong. (Passin, 1956)

By the end of the fifteenth century, the attempt at integration had clearly failed. Through official ordinances and popular custom, a policy took shape of confining the Paekchong to certain areas, usually on the outskirts of towns. They were now shunned and spoken to as one would speak to children (Rhim, 1974). On the other hand, “they were left pretty much to their own devices, just so long as they did not disturb outsiders” (Passin, 1956).

That autonomy included being allowed to run their own communities and resolve internal disputes, except in cases of serious crimes. They were also exempt from taxation, compulsory labor, and military service. Finally, they had a monopoly over ‘unclean’ occupations that involved the taking of life, like butchery, leather making, dog catching, and capital punishment (Passin, 1956). Those occupations often paid well, as one observer noted in the 1960s: “The Paekchong were not necessarily poor, and the butchers especially, maintaining good price controls and profit margins, are today comparatively well-off” (Henderson, 1968, pp. 53-54).

Conclusion

The Paekchong are today seen through the lens of the discrimination paradigm. Discrimination excluded them from normal life and thus kept them from becoming ‘normal.’

But normality was not so wonderful in pre-modern Korea. It typically meant living year-round in the same place, doing the same laborious work, and using violence only in self-defense or on behalf of the king. The shift to farming, serfdom, and a State-pacified society selected for a new type of human who would stay put in one location, do repetitive work, and forego violence.

Such a life would not interest people from a nomadic hunting background. Hunters have to move around continually because the land can support only so much wildlife. They must also kill and get their hands bloody, be it the blood of animals or that of fellow humans. Indeed, each adult male is expected to defend himself and his kinfolk, since no police and no army exist for that purpose (Frost and Harpending, 2015).

The Cagots of France

The Cagots live on both sides of the Pyrenees in southwestern France and northern Spain. They are usually said to be descended from lepers, and that reason is given for their exclusion from society. In the oldest historical references, however, they are called crestians, chrestias, or christianus, an indication that they were initially New Christians who had been Muslims, pagans, or heretics at birth and later baptized or “christened.” In a petition to the pope in 1514, a community of Cagots mentioned that they were said to be of Cathar origin. The term cagot is also attested in French as meaning “bigot” or “hypocrite”, i.e., someone who talks excessively about God but is ultimately wrong in his beliefs (Hawkins 2014; Wikipédia, 2023).

Whatever their origins, their transformation into a closed group was assisted by economic changes in southwest France during the twelfth to thirteenth centuries (Guerreau and Guy, 1988; see also Cursente, 1998). Previously, rural life had been defined by subsistence farming and pastoralism, by equal access to communal land, and by equitable land inheritance. That existence changed with the shift to feudalism, which led to intensification of food production, creation of villages, restriction of access to land ownership, and primogeniture.

The limited number of private plots pushed many people out of farming, particularly:

• Those who were already marginal, such as New Christians or lepers;

• Those who had no plot of land because they were younger sons with no inheritance; or

• Those who simply could not cope with the constraints of sedentary farm life

There thus developed a rural underclass that was scorned and shunned. The Cagots were segregated socially and spatially in various ways. They had to sit in a separate part of the church and enter by a separate door. They typically lived in their own quarter on the outskirts of town and were buried in a separate section of the local cemetery, if not in a separate cemetery. Intermarriage with them was rare and stigmatized. There may also have been occupational segregation at one time (Wikipédia, 2023).

Although the academic literature describes the forms of segregation at great length, it says little about behavioral differences between Cagots and mainstream society. This partly reflects a wish to leave out information that would put them in a bad light. The main reason, however, has been the reluctance of local people, particularly non-Cagots, to discuss such differences:

In Lescun, our first questions on the phenomenon produced hesitations and sudden silences from the former mayor, who had been so talkative on other topics. Long hesitations interrupted the flow of the conversation, which then picked up again on generalities and off-topic points. Embarrassment and evasiveness were systematically encountered during interviews on the subject, and it was often only by roundabout ways that we would get information. (Jolly, 2000, p. 206)

Among the academics who have written on the subject, Geneviève Jolly seems to be the only one who has addressed the specific issue of behavioral differences. Such differences emerge in several areas of life.

Occupations

It is often stated that the Cagots were confined to certain occupations. There are indeed records of individuals being forbidden to take up farming and livestock raising. On the other hand, some were tenant farmers and even landowners as far back as the fourteenth century (Jolly, 2000, pp. 199-200). The earliest census records of the nineteenth century show them being overrepresented in some occupations and underrepresented in others. According to the 1840 census of the village of Lescun, most residents of the Cagot quarter were day laborers (60%), followed by craftsmen (18%), farmers and farmworkers (8%), and shepherds (5%). Outside the Cagot quarter, most residents were farmers and farmworkers (55%), followed by shepherds (16%), day laborers (10%), and craftsmen (7%) (Jolly, 2000, p. 211).

Alcohol use

A resident made the following comment about the laborers he had once known in the Cagot quarter: “They would drink lots of wine. If there was no longer any, they would no longer work. But they didn’t do much work that way. All of those laborers died before reaching retirement age” (Jolly, 2000, p. 208).

House design

Non-Cagot houses, no matter how modest, were symmetrical with evenly spaced windows. Cagot houses were very irregular in appearance, even though a disproportionate number of Cagots were craftsmen (Jolly, 2000, pp. 210-211).

Marriage

Non-Cagots followed the rule of primogeniture: only the eldest son could inherit the family home and plot of land. Younger sons would often remain single and take care of older household members. The sole way for a younger son to get land of his own would be to marry into a family that only had daughters. This would be at the price of losing his ostaus—his family name: “Not only will he theoretically not inherit any land, but he will not even be able to pass on his name to any children he may have” (Jolly, 2000, p. 215).

None of those restrictions applied to Cagots, who encouraged all of their children to marry and have families of their own.

Geographic mobility

Cagots moved around much more than others did. Most of them were not bound to a plot of land, and they usually had to seek marriage partners outside their local community:

The Cagots seemed to be not tied economically and socially to one community, as were the landowners whose entire strategy rested on defending the integrity of a privately owned collective inheritance. Their [the Cagots’] area of concern went beyond the framework of the community, as shown by their geographic movements, the larger areas covered by their mate-seeking, and their associations for defense of their interests. (Jolly, 2000, p. 218)

Conclusion

When looking at the differing mental and behavioral profiles of Cagots and non-Cagots, we need to ask who diverged from whom. In general, the non-Cagot profile seems the more recent one and a closer fit to the economic environment that developed from the Middle Ages onward. Instead of using communal land on a seasonal basis, people began to live year-round on privately owned farms, with the result that a new mix of mental and behavioral traits was now favored.

Let’s suppose that a younger son in a non-Cagot family could not tolerate remaining celibate. Instead of waiting until a bride with a plot of land became available, he would marry a girl with no land. With few means to support a family, his mental and behavioral traits would be purged from the gene pool. There was thus strong selection for sexual restraint and future time orientation. Attachment to a single plot of land also selected for individuals with less monotony avoidance. Both selection pressures would have been much weaker among Cagots.

The point bears repeating. The non-Cagots were the ones who became more and more different. The Cagots remained the same. The latter preserved a mental and behavioral profile that was normal for everyone until land inheritance became strictly rationed from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries onward.

References

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Thornton, R.Y. and K. Endo. (1992). Preventing Crime in America and Japan. A Comparative Study. New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Wikipédia (2023). Cagots. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot