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I'm sorry if this question has been asked and answered before:
What is the best/steelmanned pro-HBD proposal for the actual evolutionary mechanism by which various populations (i.e. whites) have experienced selection-for-intelligence while others (i.e. blacks) haven't? What unique circumstances and thus evolutionary pressures did the human populations that migrated to Europe or Asia face, for which human populations that migrated solely around Africa wouldn't have faced?
Of course the most compelling explanation I have found is the 'cold winter' hypothesis, that a period of harsher winters in Europe during one of the world's most recent ice ages might have made human populations in Europe select for those with better longer-term planning ability (intelligence) because they could i.e. stockpile food better in order to survive said winters. However, is it then believed plausible that no roughly similar periods of relative food scarcity or famine could have struck (anywhere) in Africa in potentially the same vein, exerting at least a similar selection pressure, albeit with different ultimate causes, on at least one of Africa's many ethnic groups? Additionally, how does this address the IQ differences between ethnic groups when non-european ethnic groups are part of the discussion, such as middle-easterners, indians, south asian or even east asian people? These groups all have for the most part 1. different IQs from each other and 2. mostly higher IQs than sub-saharans. Assuming cold winter hypothesis, in order to explain i.e. indians and middle-easterner's lower IQ than europeans, should one presume that indian and middle-eastern ethnic groups did not migrate through a region of the world experiencing anything resembling a 'cold winter' like europe's? If so, what is then to explain why indians and middle-easterners have higher average IQs than sub-saharans?
Basically, I am in general looking for a steelmanned version of a logical argument by induction about how HBD might have actually occurred in history based on what we know about evolution, in a way that accounts for some of the difficulties I intuitively think any such argument must overcome. In other words, why do both i.e. Javanese and Irish have higher IQs than sub-saharans; Which evolutionary pressures could have plausibly faced the historical ancestors of the Irish as well as the historical ancestors of the Javanese, but not the historical ancestors of any sub-saharan populations? Or am I just thinking about this wrong?
I'm very open to seeing links to research about various mechanisms of evolution, or that put forward potential answers to some of the questions I'm asking via i.e. archaeology or anthropology, and in general I actually hope that there might be elucidating research to read among many contexts relating to the subject. However, please note that I am not particularly interested in seeing links to research of any type that claim to either prove or invalidate HBD that broadly falls under the category of "testing modern day ethnic groups' IQ and then trying to control for environmental factors." My adventure exploring that realm of the debate, in the form of stuff like genetic admixture studies or twin studies, I have found frustratingly inconclusive. So if you care to answer, please limit discussion the areas discussed, that is, steelmanned argument for a plausible mechanism by which evolutionary pressures to select for intelligence were exerted on the world's ethnic groups in such differing magnitudes.
I think that coming up with a just-so story explaining why or how a species evolved the way it did is usually a mistake. I prefer to look at it this way: If you flip a coin 100 times, on average it will come up heads 50 times and tails 50 times. The odds that it will actually come up heads exactly 50 times is actually pretty unlikely, though. If you actually took 5 fair coins and flipped each one 100 times, it's very unlikely that all 5 would come up heads exactly 50 times. What you'll see instead is something more like -
(I used a random number generator to flip 5 coins 100 times each)
Coin A: 49 / 51
Coin B: 45 / 55
Coin C: 48 / 52
Coin D: 57 / 43
Coin E: 48 / 52
Sub in any trait you like for coin flips, and it's obvious that a little bit of variation is to be expected, especially when conditions are different. On close examination, the idea that all 5 would come up with exactly the same result is a strange and unjustified supposition. The real question is how much variation there is, and whether or not it matters.
All that being said, I don't like the cold winters theory because if it's true then it should imply Inuit supergeniuses. My preferred just-so story is that complex cultures with advanced technology demand more intelligence, and interconnected cultures become more complex and develop more technology. There is a ribbon of trade running from the tin mines of Cornwall to the silk plantations of China that has existed since the Bronze Age, and along that ribbon you'll find all the most advanced civilizations that have ever existed. The less-advanced civilizations of the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa, Polynesia, and Australia are all separated from that band of trade by oceans and/or deserts.
This doesn't make much sense for a few reasons. The first is that, when it comes to evolutionary lineages, we're not flipping a coin 100 times and expecting it to come up heads 50 times. An estimation closer to the magnitudes would be more like flipping a coin 1,000,000 times and expecting it to come up heads 500,000 times +/- a reasonably small difference. However sub-saharan IQ scores are more or less a full standard deviation lower than white ones, a difference so large that, if genetic, I wouldn't really expect it to be just the random result/chance given the massive scales of evolution and human populations.
It also doesn't make sense for a second reason: a commonly cited-fact about sub-saharan populations is that its actually the region with the widest range of genetic difference between its various ethnic subgroups. Wouldn't one expect that, if the supposedly genetic difference in intelligence is due to something like random chance, the large amount of genetic differences in Africa would offer plenty of opportunities for at least a handful of their ethnic subgroups to have 'lucked out' in the same way? But the reality is that IQs in the sub-sahara are low across the board. No ethnic subgroup across the whole continent has managed a lucky roll, in fact, all of them independently managed unlucky ones.
As far as I'm aware, India lies along this ribbon, yet (depending on who you ask) the national IQ on the Indian subcontinent is almost as bad as some places in the sub-sahara, and (regardless of who you ask) certainly worse than Europe and China. Is the assertion that this is mostly due to environmental differences, and that Africa suffers from both environmental and genetic ones? If not, what's the explanation for the difference in IQs between India and other regions like Europe or Africa?
In general I guess I also basically do not buy the assertion that civilizations were altogether more complex along a roughly europe->china silk-road-esque continuum compared to elsewhere, at least until the last six hundred years or so. However, even if I was to accept that, I would definitely dispute that human civilizations along that ribbon were measurably more complex i.e. at least 3,000 years ago (to be generous) and before, and I'm skeptical of 3,000 years being enough time for humanity to speciate into the sheer scale of IQ difference between ethnic groups that we know today.
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