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DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vricius 8y agoof course we are all mutts, we all evolved from bacteria. the question is the relative purity. "is the race pure from this period to this period" is what people mean when they mention purity. When a jew chooses a mate, they are only concerned if their mate has pure jewish ancestry from the last 2000 years.
- pryce 8y agoThat doesn't equate to "relative purity" at all. The number of ancestors someone has 66 generations in the past (approx 2000 years) is enormous. We can get around this by making value judgements that say "only the direct matrilineal line ancestors count" or "only the direct patrilineal line ancestors count", but ideas like that are absolutely human value judgements made as a reaction to the overwhelming complexity above, and have no basis in biology. These value or worth of those judgements are also artificially enforced and were not robustly adhered to historically. We are indeed all mutts, and every credible analysis for the last century has shown "race purity" is an abstraction that is absurd to the point of lunacy.
- defen 8y ago> We are indeed all mutts I get why Reich says things like this, but you have to ask what it would mean not to be a "mutt". Is that even physically possible? If not, why do we need DNA testing of ancient skeletons to prove this?
- reader5000 8y agoMore in depth article from Reich: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-r....
- drilldrive 8y ago>What makes Dr. Watson’s and Mr. Wade’s statements so insidious is that they start with the accurate observation that many academics are implausibly denying the possibility of average genetic differences among human populations, and then end with a claim — backed by no evidence — that they know what those differences are and that they correspond to racist stereotypes. Perhaps there is no hard evidence because nobody is willing to risk their lively-hood over researching such claims. Just look at what they did to Dr. Watson. Heck, a few paragraphs above Reich was talking about African-Americans being genetically predisposed to prostate cancer as if it was a highly controversial topic.
- smrtinsert 8y agoWell, the problem is we probably can't find anyone to sponsor to study to determine if once and for all, whites are prone to psychosis and mass murder via guns.
- drilldrive 8y agoNow that is quite the switch of topic. The only known research of race differences in psychopathy is of Richard Lynn's 2002 studies on the topic. In this, Lynn does point to whites being more prone to psychosis than on average. I do know of some controversy of Richard Lynn's work, and here is a response paper to such: https://web.archive.org/web/20130108233748/http://riskreduction.soceco.uci.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Psychopathic-personality-and-racial-ethnic-differences-reconsidered.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20130108233748/http://riskreduct... Regarding school shootings in particular, my personal guess is that such sour actions on the average are merely a symptom of a hole in America's conscious, in that these semi-affluent white boys have lost meaning in life, and do not care if the actions they commit are grave. Of particular note is you do not see boys of abject poverty commit these actions, as they are more focused on not starving (and thus have something obviously meaningful to their life to prioritize).
- scythe 8y ago
- thaumasiotes 8y ago> A similar prehistory occurred in the Iberian Peninsula where a third population, also arrived from the Steppes, joined the hunter-gather and farmer groups. In this case, DNA research shows that the third population was exclusively male: While only 40 percent of the population about 6,000 years ago comes from the Steppes, 100 percent of the Y chromosomes do. This doesn't say what the author wants it to say. If 100% of the Y chromosomes come from the intrusive population, that doesn't mean that the intrusive population was entirely male. It means that 100% of indigenous males were exterminated, so that (after the intrusion) the male population was entirely intrusive. All the males being intruders is a very different concept from all the intruders being male.
- mirimir 8y agoFrom what I've read, that's what the Mongols did. It's also what happened for many indigenous groups in eastern North America. Except that the males were escaped African-American slaves. I'm guessing that it was standard procedure for thousands of years.
- pryce 8y ago> were exterminated or expelled, or otherwise prevented from being allowed to breed.
- mirimir 8y agoSuch as castrated.
- astazangasta 8y agoNo, it doesn't mean that either (extermination of males). It just means that only Steppe Y-chromosomes survived. This could be the result of extermination, or it could be the result of stochastic drift, or selection, or any number of other scenarios that result in the loss of some set of Y chromosomes.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoRealistically, extermination of males is exactly what it means. It cannot be stochastic drift; the pool of chromosomes dying out is too large. It can be selection (it is selection), but it can only be the kind of selection that involves every native male failing to have children at all, because the Y chromosome does not recombine.
- quoyz 8y agoDavid Reich you say.
- ng12 8y agoI wonder how many of these genetic migrations were peaceful.
- mjfl 8y agoprobably very few, if the old testament or the huge proportion of ancient skeletons that died violent deaths serve as any guide. which is why I think this story by Reich is very tone deaf. It's hard to see how a 90% population replacement promotes feelings of unity and hand-holding. One imagines a superposition of a video feed of the invasion of the steppe-people on horseback, stampeding the native defenses, cutting the male children's throats and raping the women, with a video a David Reich being like "we're all a little mixed".
- duality 8y agoTone deaf indeed. It seems common for people not to ascribe a full measure of humanity to humans from the (distant enough) past. Thought exercise: are there any large-scale population replacements happening today, and how do people feel about that? Surely not a kumbaya feeling I'd bet.
- astazangasta 8y agoIt's easy to find these in the relatively recent past. See: North America.
- perilunar 8y agoIn the recent past: the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji?, etc. Current: Tibet, West Papua, Rwanda?, Northern Europe perhaps?
- deogeo 8y agoAdd Xinjiang to the list of current ones - from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/world/asia/china-muslim-detention-uighur-kazakh.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/world/asia/china-muslim-d..., flagged off the HN front page: "Decades of migration by Han, China’s dominant ethnic group, have transformed Xinjiang, fueling Uighur anxieties. Uighurs, once the majority, are 46 percent of the region’s 22 people million people, Han are 40 percent and Kazakhs 7 percent, according to government estimates."
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago> The Steppe migration resulted in a 90 percent replacement of the population. >While only 40 percent of the population about 6,000 years ago comes from the Steppes, 100 percent of the Y chromosomes do. From reading this article it seems another way that this could be phrased, is that we are all the descendants of perpetrators of genocide.
- Noumenon72 8y agoDon't forget the rape! 100% of your Ys coming from one place is the opposite of "mutt", too. But the only way you can get to do race science is by coming to the conclusion "There's no such thing as race" first, and making the details sound boring enough that nobody asks.
- mirimir 8y agoYeah, the title ought to be something like "DNA reveals many of us are descendants of genocide and rape". Edit: So I clearly have some Mongol heritage. And so does my wife, who's Ukrainian. One of her grandmothers could have easily passed as a native in Mongolia.
- dqpb 8y agoThe concept of race has always sounded like total bullshit to me. Do you have a definition that makes any sense?
- toasterlovin 8y agoEasy: the definition is what most people mean when they use the term. Paraphrased: phenotypic characteristics that correlate with ancestry.
- haihaibye 8y agoSequence the world and run them through a clustering algorithm, picking how many clusters you get: 2 clusters: African and non-African 5 clusters: African, European, Asian, PNG/Australian Aboriginal, Native Americans All the way to: 1 billion clusters: Individual families When most people think of race they are talking about the number of groups that make clusters of major continents, where there wasn't much gene flow until 1492. Google PCA ancestry (PC term for race) eg gnomAD: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSZ-lBFuHuVO2g446dI21P0F8oqcmLYAGZAXy-Yg9uJ5ULt2Pxd https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSZ-l... Self reported race matches genetically determined race at rates in the high 90s. A way to think about it without clustering etc: People separated (usually by geography) long enough that they bred mostly amongst themselves, and developed characteristics different than other groups. Yes, you can walk from Amsterdam to Beijing and see a gradient of people the whole way - but that doesn't mean you can't tell the difference between a Chinese person and a Dutchman.
- deogeo 8y ago> “No population is, or ever could be, pure,” Why this obsession with 'purity'? Isn't it obvious that, despite none being pure, some populations are more closely related?
- danans 8y agoIt's a rebuke of the false trope of the purity of racial ancestry which has persisted in many human societies for centuries, occasionally manifesting in the form of events like the Holocaust. Because that trope has sadly persisted to this day in some quarters, it's falsehood needs to be continually exposed, especially by sciences such as biological anthropology, which were once used to promulgate it.
- mirimir 8y agoActually, it's my impression that some Jewish groups have done a pretty good job at maintaining racial purity. In some cases, leading to ~frequent homozygousity for some nasty recessive mutations. I don't know the specifics, but I've read that only certified Jews can officially marry in Israel. And the standards are so high that many "Jewish" immigrants don't qualify. Now that we have DNA testing, I wonder if that will become the standard.
- danans 8y ago> Actually, it's my impression that some Jewish groups have done a pretty good job at maintaining racial purity. Because certain very specific subgroups have done this doesn't mean that they are "pure". These in-marrying groups are always descended from mixed populations in the first place, populations that predate the identity badges we ascribe to them today. Tay Sachs, among the genetic diseases you alluded to, is also present in non Jewish populations, but at a lower rate: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/non-jews-increasingly-hit-by-jewish-diseases-1.5319996 https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/non-jews-increasingly-hit-by-... > I don't know the specifics, but I've read that only certified Jews can officially marry in Israel. > And the standards are so high that many "Jewish" immigrants don't qualify. People can convert to Judaism, and even be born into Judaism with one Jewish parent. This is very common among populations outside of Israel. Large subgroups in Judaism, sephardi, baghdadi, etc, are genetically quite diverse in origin, and are significantly represented among the Israeli population.
- ern 8y agoGenetics also show that India’s caste system, previously thought to have developed under colonial rule, was in place thousands of years earlier. “Colonial rule” means British rule presumably. I always assumed the caste system long pre-dated it, considering how entrenched it seems to be.
- danans 8y agoThe British exploited it, and under them aspects of it became more rigid, but it long predates them.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThe data shows there was less than one inter-caste marriage per caste pair per generation for the last few thousand years. What was left to become "more rigid" than that under the British?
- danans 8y agoFor one thing, there is often a subcaste structure within each local caste itself. The subcastes of a caste who received British patronage, i.e. jobs in the colonial administration, would preferably marry only among themselves. Of course, this was about preservation of wealth and power, and not so different from similar marriage practices among wealthy classes in England (as depicted in Downton Abbey) The British didn't invent the sub-castes, but they effectively exploited them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mirimir 8y agoThere's also this: > Once upon a time, 4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around today—only one man did the same. So it seems like this was a common pattern. https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success https://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2015/03/13/gr.186684.114.abstract https://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2015/03/13/gr.186684....
- rayiner 8y ago> Genetics also show that India’s caste system, previously thought to have developed under colonial rule, was in place thousands of years earlier. This is such a shockingly ignorant statement that I wonder what Harvard is teaching these days.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- telotortium 8y agoLook up David Reich. The actual finding is that many Jātis show genetic evidence that interbreeding with other Jātis has been negligible over the past 2000 years. It's not necessarily a statement of the social relations between the Jātis, let alone the varnas.