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How We Got Here: DNA Points to a Single Migration From Africa
- onetime20160931 10y agoI can't read the full article. Even with all my cookies cleared it takes me to a subscription page. Same with web search. What's up with this?
- EarthIsHome 10y agoYou may have read all your free articles for the month. The NYT is a paid subscription newspaper but they offer a handful of articles a month for free. If you enjoy the NYT and read it often, think about subscribing.
- gruez 10y ago...and how do they keep track of how many articles each person read each month? Oh right, by cookies.
- imaginenore 10y agoThere are other ways. Local storage, indexedDB, WebSQL, browser fingerprinting.
- M_Grey 10y agoControl your cookies, dump your storage, Scriptblocker, uBlock Origin, and Random Agent Spoofer.
- DrJokepu 10y agoOr just open it in incognito mode / private browsing.
- imaginenore 10y agoYour average user has no idea how to do any of that.
- M_Grey 10y agoPlenty of them use ad blockers, and if the pressure keeps up they'll figure out much of the rest too. The very environment driving this anti-privacy trend is just educating a generation of consumers, in the same way that the very instant people were able to get away from advertising they did.
- reduxive 10y agoThe article is not especially pay-walled, from what I can detect, using multiple devices. It seems to just use the typical 10 article cookie variable that all NYT articles usually check. I'd estimate your current machine is behind some kind of network/web proxy that's browsing with a separate session, on your behalf, with a stale cookie that has reached the free article limit attached to its session. Maybe you're the victim of an A/B test? That's the only other idea I can imagine.
- agumonkey 10y agoLet me simplify your life a little http://www.printfriendly.com/print?source=homepage&url_s=uGGC%25dN%25cS%25cSJJJmALGvzrFmpBz%25cScabg%25cSaj%25cScc%25cSFpvrApr%25cSnApvrAG-qAn-uHznA-uvFGBELmuGzy%25dS_E%25dQa http://www.printfriendly.com/print?source=homepage&url_s=uGG...
- hownottowrite 10y agoThe commentary referenced in the article is far better than the article itself: http://bit.ly/2cWOXmj http://bit.ly/2cWOXmj [0] short url provided for insanely long paywall avoiding link in the nyt OP
- solarengineer 10y agoI often wonder how people reconcile such scientific reports with what religious texts say. Some weeks ago, while discussing with a colleague about the human tendency for discrimination on any grounds, I'd said "After all, we humans were once apes in Africa". He responded with "Hey, I'm a follower of so-and-so religion, and our religious text says that God made everything within a week. So, please let's not discuss topics that are hurtful to me".
- reflexive 10y agoThe idea is to interpret the larger point the text is making, and not get hung up on interpreting each detail literally. As for your point, saying "After all, we're all children of God" means essentially the same thing.
- 13of40 10y agoFunny, because in my interpretation of the text (e.g. Genesis 9:3 [1]) god draws a distinct line between people and animals. Saying that we're all apes from Africa is more like erasing that line and acknowledging our kinship. [1] http://biblehub.com/genesis/9-3.htm http://biblehub.com/genesis/9-3.htm
- aptwebapps 10y agoRight, but the question is whether the GP was trying to make common cause with all humans or with all animals.
- reflexive 10y agoThank you. The key point of Genesis is: be fruitful, multiply, and allow your descendants to enjoy the blessings of God. Getting involved in quibbles about the status of other species is exactly the anti-pattern of how to not to get a good outcome from interpreting a sacred text.
- linkregister 10y ago
- ertttddfgdf 10y agoDon't have the ref. onhand but read recently that African populace shows the greatest genetic diversity in Homo sapiens sapiens. India comes in at second place, presumably because of larger migration to the subcontinent compared to Europe.
- reflexive 10y agoAfrica is home to the tallest (Sudanese) and shortest (pygmy) humans. You can think of the entire non-African population as a little inbred offshoot of the main stock. I recommend E. O. Wilson's "Social Conquest of Earth" as a reference for quantifying the genetic difference within and between populations.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoI wouldn't necessarily call them inbred. Whites crossbred with Neanderthals and Asians did the same with some other related Homo genus whose name escapes me. Doesn't surprise me that both went extinct. If we're still this prejudiced towards each other in the 21st century, I have little doubt that we played a large role in their extinction
- reflexive 10y agoDenisovans (Homo Altai / Homo sapiens Denisova). You make a good point that the emigrants did mix in a peppering of genes from their early-arriving distant cousins. But overall, only a tiny fraction of the available gene pool made it out of Africa.
- Mao_Zedang 10y agoCriticizing someones religions is hate speech.
- tasty_freeze 10y agoHe didn't say he criticized the other fellow's religion. He brought up a fact which happened to contradict the teaching's of that other guy's religion. It sounds like everything went down just fine: the first person's intent wasn't to attack religion, the second guy said let's drop the subject, and the first guy did. No hate speech at all.
- curried_haskell 10y agoI think, or hope, he was being sarcastic. Religion is a belief system and personal opinion. While you have the freedom to hold whatever beliefs you want, I am free to criticize and ridicule your beliefs if I think they're inconsistent or ridiculous.
- Retric 10y agoNope. Remember priests are a protected class, but pedo priests are not. The worlds major religions are responsible for thousands of times more death than nuclear weapons. Evil is perhaps even to weak a word for religious teachings, however we are slowly moving past our superstitious past. Sadly this is meaningless for the billions of dead. PS: You might feel offended by such truth, but this does not qualify as hate speech. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
- eloff 10y agoCome on. Billions? That's way off the mark and you can't give evidence to the contrary.
- Retric 10y ago~107 billion people have lived. You can argue how many people where sacrificed by the Aztec, how many died in the crusades, stonings, subsides, inquision, starvation, immolation, disease, etc. But you can't limit things to either recorded history or the subset of religions currently in vogue. PS: There is a recent trend to whitewash history and make religions blameless for inciting conquest or 'ethnic' cleansing, but don't fall for it.
- mc32 10y agoI wonder how this would tie in to the human bottleneck theory. According to this theory[1], somewhere between 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, we had a human genetic bottleck event where there were only about 10 000 individuals left on the planet. If true, we're one lucky species. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
- m_mueller 10y agoWasn't that discredited? From your link: > Other research has cast doubt on a link between Toba and a genetic bottleneck. For example, ancient stone tools in southern India were found above and below a thick layer of ash from the Toba eruption and were very similar across these layers, suggesting that the dust clouds from the eruption did not wipe out this local population.
- mc32 10y agoIt's fair to say scientists have cast doubt on the theory but I don't think it has been completely discredited[1]? I could be wrong, so any elucidation would be great. At least it's an interesting thought. Or maybe it's just wistful thinking. [1]https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/how-big-was-the-human-population-bottleneck-not-anything-close-to-2/ https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/how-big-...
- _ao789 10y agoGreat link, thanks for posting it.
- saiya-jin 10y agoit was worse than that - according to my phd cellular research ex-gf (some rare anemias), at one point there were only 5 women/females from which we all come from. this can be traced in all of our DNA. I presume it was before homo sapiens, so maybe a million years ago if not more (sorry I don't have any factual details, but girl was super clever and she stated this as a well known fact in their research community). all the racists of this world should get a bit of education to get perspective (wishful thinking...)
- contingencies 10y agoWe know there were multiple dispersals out of Africa, but we can trace our ancestry back to a single one. How does that work? Everyone else died? What about recently discovered groups like the Red Deer Cave People? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Deer_Cave_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Deer_Cave_people Doesn't evidence exist that groups interbreed, at least Denisovans / Neanderthals / Modern Humans?
- flukus 10y agoI thinks it's "all extent modern humans migrated in one wave", they also bumped uglies with a few other not so modern species along the way. Personally I want to see more study into mungo man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mungo_remains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mungo_remains), that has some potential to upset things.
- contingencies 10y agoIn 1988, the skeleton of a child believed to be contemporary with Mungo man was discovered. Investigation of the remains was blocked by the 3TTG [ie. Three Traditional Tribal Groups] with the remains subsequently protected but remaining in-situ. An adult skeleton was exposed by erosion in 2005 but by late 2006 had been completely destroyed by wind and rain. This loss resulted in the indigenous custodians receiving a government grant of $735,000 to survey and improve the conservation of skeletons, hearths and middens that were eroding from the dunes. Conservation is in-situ and no research is permitted. Sounds like the local aboriginal tribes are claiming ownership of remains that predate them, that they never knew were there anyway, and blocking further research. Thanks guys.
- VLM 10y agoI read that as a Roanoke Colony situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony They left, they died, they tried again until they didn't die.
- mborch 10y ago"However, neither Mallick et al. nor Malaspinas et al. exclude the possibility of multiple out-of-Africa dispersals." (from the commentary). How is that one wave?
- dnautics 10y agoyeah, i doubt the thesis. The egyptians certainly left africa in several waves, and it's unbelievable that there wasn't genetic mixing between egypt and subsaharan africa.
- dogma1138 10y agoWhat are exactly egyptians in your case? Much of the mediterranean basin including modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, and the rest of N. Africa was also settled by "Europeans". Egypt itself went through multiple periods including Persian, Canaanite, and Hellenic periods. Overall you need to be very specific of the period because there was a lot of influx and movement of people and civilizations. Even in the past 2000 years there were huge demographic changes in Egypt, the Egyptians today are not an entirely good representation of Egypt even 2000 years ago during the Coptic period. The changes in skin tone, physique and facial characteristics in Egyptian art are quite interesting to see and they represent the changes in the ethnic and demographic makeup of the civilization. For example late period mummies and portraits show the outcome of genetic influx from Hellenic and Roman cultures into Egypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayum_mummy_portraits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayum_mummy_portraits, this is even more interesting since Faiyum is quite far from the coast line which shows that demographic changes spanned the geography of egypt.
- dnautics 10y agoso, basically you made my point for me.
- burrdurr 10y ago"Don't ask questions Goy!".
- 10y ago
- dschiptsov 10y agoAnd Australian Bushmen, Polynesians, south Indians show us the multiple waves of migration, but who are they compared to a fancy statistical model made from poorly understood DNA sequences by clever hipsters!