And, remember, evolution does not move creatures towards perfection but merely towards fitness for their current environment. So why in the world wouldn't differences in IQ be a thing between different ethnicities when they evolved over long periods of time in very different environments?
I am happy to be wrong in my speculations here. And I am not someone who thinks intelligence is the main marker of a great person. The people in my life I admire most have not been the most intelligent people I have met. So I don't understand (at least fully) why people can't have this rational discussion about what almost certainly is another variation in traits among different ethnic groups. We can't deal with reality if we can't be honest.
There isn't really a comparison since this thread is about, generally, gypsies - as in Roma - who are
not really worth looking twice at. They don't have any "secret cool shit" like the Romanichal or the IT's, they are literally just
gross.
Romanichal have a bunch of really nice, posh things - a lot of magician tricks, they used to be closer to "carnies" so they could do crazy tricks while standing on top of a horse. Like I said, they were a very popular, peaceful folk - very "mystical" and masters of their craft. They were never anything close to criminal, and they literally had no idea what to do when confronted with Roma.
Irish Travellers have a much more impressive history - where the unique culture has a
crazy level of influence in a particular circumstance - the IRA in both major wars adopted the lifestyle. When an IRA member was "On the Run" and hiding from authorities, he would hide out with the pikeys. They were very skilled at identifying hideouts and had, potentially still
have, a network of concealed hideouts across the UK.
So, if someone was
on the run, they would take them along over to the next town, then dump them into a "safehouse", to be taken along with another group. Similar with the weapons - from what I've heard, the types of places include:
Disused buildings, with
hidden rooms - for example, if it has a basement, the entire house will still be "abandoned" except for the basement. Likewise for factories and shit. Unlike most modern groups, ITs are
really fucking good at staying hidden.
Bunkers and dugouts in the woods - some real Eastern Front Partisan shit lol
Construction containers and other industrial equipment, holes in the ground which you could park "on top of" to hide, there was
a lot of sneaky shit - Irish Travellers were a full part of British society, so many were former military. They had fought in both world wars, and had a whole series of unique tactics. During the Troubles, the Army were trying to learn what they could about those methods, and then started training third world terrorists, badly, in the same methods.
It's genuinely worth doing, just for fun. Old-school manual tools are great in that they can be used relatively silently, and without a power source. Wire brushes, antique wood-fired steamers, the sort of tools which can still function off-grid. Pikeys are the
ultimate partisan force, because that's the origin story. They're people who were first displaced by Oliver Cromwell and have been consistently dodging extremist governments for the last few centuries.