4 ms·

> “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 close

by 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 ago
It'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 ago
  Actually, 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.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      > People can convert to Judaism, and even be born into Judaism with one Jewish parent. This is very common among populations outside of Israel. Yes, but to strict orthodox, they're not really "Jewish". At one point, I researched rabbinical criteria for determining pedigree and classifying degree of Jewishness. Who can marry who, and how any children are classified. It's mind-boggling. If I have some time while this thread is hot, I'll post some sources. Edit: Here are some sources. Please note that they're Jewish sources. Not anti-Jewish sources. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11977-pedigree http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11977-pedigree https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4045946/jewish/Why-Cant-a-Convert-Marry-a-Kohen.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4045946/jewis... https://tikvahfund.org/uncategorized/intermarriage-can-anything-be-done/ https://tikvahfund.org/uncategorized/intermarriage-can-anyth... https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marriage-in-judaism https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marriage-in-judaism http://www.cohen-levi.org/jewish_genes_and_genealogy/the_dna_chain_of_tradition.htm http://www.cohen-levi.org/jewish_genes_and_genealogy/the_dna... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288118/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288118/
      - danans 8y ago
        > Yes, but to strict orthodox, they're not really "Jewish". Unless you are seeking to identify as "strict orthodox", why would it matter? The majority of Jewish groups are welcoming to people from the outside, if they achieve the required objectives in terms of religious and cultural fluency.
        mirimir 8y ago
        I don't really care, now. But strict orthodox rules do apply in Israel. And that's not so insignificant. It's one reason why I'm in the US and not in Israel.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Indeed. Jews are literally racist by creed, yet it is often overlooked for reasons of diversity.
- ng12 8y ago
  I don't think it's a rebuke at all. The other side of the coin is to make sure you're the steppe tribes, not the hunter-gatherers. People who care about such things don't really care about purity, they care about winners and losers.
  - danans 8y ago
    > The other side of the coin is to make sure you're the steppe tribes, not the hunter-gatherers. This doesn't follow from the researcher's statement at all. Just because the mechanism by which diversity happened thousands of years ago was often terrible doesn't mean we need to project that upon today, when we have much better mechanisms for genetic diversity, like immigration. We, as a human society, have improved just a bit.
    - ng12 8y ago
      > We, as a human society, have improved just a bit. I think it's debatable. The tribes are much bigger but really little has changed.
- danans 8y ago
  It's fascinating that my comment above rebuking racial purity theories is so controversial (evidenced by the oscillating down and up votes for a full day), yet there are no follow up comments supporting racial purity theory in general, just a discussion about the relative genetic isolation of one group? It's surprising that rebuking racial purity as a concept would be so controversial today on a forum like this.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mjfl 8y ago
you get extra points if you can dress your scientific story as "speaking out against racism".
- vricius 8y ago
  not sure why you were downvoted, this is exactly why they mentioned purity.
- gigablorp 8y ago
  The dishonesty of virtue signaling is less about lying through one's teeth, and more about empathetic sensitivity being a social facade by default. Empathy is almost universally a lie crafted to the comfort and benefit of a brittle externality. If you find the concept tedious, encourage other people to be less sensitive. When we tap dance on egg shells, to benefit a prude's ears, the whiniest assholes win.
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> Isn't it obvious that, despite none being pure, some populations are more closely related? It is obvious, and the same data shows that groups can be very pure indeed. From this very article: > Genetics also show that India’s caste system, previously thought to have developed under colonial rule, was in place thousands of years earlier. First, "previously thought to have developed under colonial rule" is just false. The ancient Greeks wrote about India's caste system, thousands of years ago. Second, what the data shows is not a record of social structure. It shows that modern Indian castes have practiced endogamy -- mating within the group, with negligible inflow from other groups -- for thousands of years. Most people would be happy to describe this state of affairs as "pure" ancestry.
- danans 8y ago
  > First, "previously thought to have developed under colonial rule" is just false. The ancient Greeks wrote about India's caste system, thousands of years ago. Correct, the article is flat wrong on this. Indian sources that even predate the Greeks also speak in detail about the societal arrangement. > Second, what the data shows is not a record of social structure. It shows that modern Indian castes have practiced endogamy -- mating within the group, with negligible inflow from other groups Yes, but they are still sampled, albeit in varying proportions, from the same source populations, referred to in the literature as ASI and ANI, which are themselves composite groups.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > Yes, but they are still sampled, albeit in varying proportions, from the same source populations, referred to in the literature as ASI and ANI. Sure, but that was several thousand years ago. Again, most people are perfectly happy to describe unmixed ancestry for the last 2400 years as being "pure", and the castes go back farther than that.
    - danans 8y ago
      > Again, most people are perfectly happy to describe unmixed ancestry for the last 2400 years as being "pure", and the castes go back farther than that. Just because "most people" are willing to draw that line at 2400 years doesn't make it a valid argument. At most you could say that there is genetic evidence to support the hypothesis that the castes have practiced endogamy for a long time, evidenced by their characteristic genetic admixtures from their shared source populations, and that the caste hierarchy is roughly correlated with ANI admixture rate. That doesn't equate to the word "pure" at all. People are willing to make all sorts of claims about their and others' identities to suit their personal agendas, and it's their right to do so, but they aren't doing science. What about the many millennia that elapsed between the last major shared human population bottleneck and 2400 years ago?
known 8y ago
Indian caste system is 2700 years old as per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Indian_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Indian_history

by 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 ago

It'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 ago
Actually, 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.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    > People can convert to Judaism, and even be born into Judaism with one Jewish parent. This is very common among populations outside of Israel. Yes, but to strict orthodox, they're not really "Jewish". At one point, I researched rabbinical criteria for determining pedigree and classifying degree of Jewishness. Who can marry who, and how any children are classified. It's mind-boggling. If I have some time while this thread is hot, I'll post some sources. Edit: Here are some sources. Please note that they're Jewish sources. Not anti-Jewish sources. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11977-pedigree http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11977-pedigree https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4045946/jewish/Why-Cant-a-Convert-Marry-a-Kohen.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4045946/jewis... https://tikvahfund.org/uncategorized/intermarriage-can-anything-be-done/ https://tikvahfund.org/uncategorized/intermarriage-can-anyth... https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marriage-in-judaism https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marriage-in-judaism http://www.cohen-levi.org/jewish_genes_and_genealogy/the_dna_chain_of_tradition.htm http://www.cohen-levi.org/jewish_genes_and_genealogy/the_dna... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288118/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288118/
    - danans 8y ago
      > Yes, but to strict orthodox, they're not really "Jewish". Unless you are seeking to identify as "strict orthodox", why would it matter? The majority of Jewish groups are welcoming to people from the outside, if they achieve the required objectives in terms of religious and cultural fluency.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        I don't really care, now. But strict orthodox rules do apply in Israel. And that's not so insignificant. It's one reason why I'm in the US and not in Israel.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Indeed. Jews are literally racist by creed, yet it is often overlooked for reasons of diversity.
ng12 8y ago
I don't think it's a rebuke at all. The other side of the coin is to make sure you're the steppe tribes, not the hunter-gatherers. People who care about such things don't really care about purity, they care about winners and losers.
- danans 8y ago
  > The other side of the coin is to make sure you're the steppe tribes, not the hunter-gatherers. This doesn't follow from the researcher's statement at all. Just because the mechanism by which diversity happened thousands of years ago was often terrible doesn't mean we need to project that upon today, when we have much better mechanisms for genetic diversity, like immigration. We, as a human society, have improved just a bit.
  - ng12 8y ago
    > We, as a human society, have improved just a bit. I think it's debatable. The tribes are much bigger but really little has changed.
danans 8y ago
It's fascinating that my comment above rebuking racial purity theories is so controversial (evidenced by the oscillating down and up votes for a full day), yet there are no follow up comments supporting racial purity theory in general, just a discussion about the relative genetic isolation of one group? It's surprising that rebuking racial purity as a concept would be so controversial today on a forum like this.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mjfl 8y ago

you get extra points if you can dress your scientific story as "speaking out against racism".

vricius 8y ago
not sure why you were downvoted, this is exactly why they mentioned purity.
gigablorp 8y ago
The dishonesty of virtue signaling is less about lying through one's teeth, and more about empathetic sensitivity being a social facade by default. Empathy is almost universally a lie crafted to the comfort and benefit of a brittle externality. If you find the concept tedious, encourage other people to be less sensitive. When we tap dance on egg shells, to benefit a prude's ears, the whiniest assholes win.

thaumasiotes 8y ago

> Isn't it obvious that, despite none being pure, some populations are more closely related? It is obvious, and the same data shows that groups can be very pure indeed. From this very article: > Genetics also show that India’s caste system, previously thought to have developed under colonial rule, was in place thousands of years earlier. First, "previously thought to have developed under colonial rule" is just false. The ancient Greeks wrote about India's caste system, thousands of years ago. Second, what the data shows is not a record of social structure. It shows that modern Indian castes have practiced endogamy -- mating within the group, with negligible inflow from other groups -- for thousands of years. Most people would be happy to describe this state of affairs as "pure" ancestry.

danans 8y ago
> First, "previously thought to have developed under colonial rule" is just false. The ancient Greeks wrote about India's caste system, thousands of years ago. Correct, the article is flat wrong on this. Indian sources that even predate the Greeks also speak in detail about the societal arrangement. > Second, what the data shows is not a record of social structure. It shows that modern Indian castes have practiced endogamy -- mating within the group, with negligible inflow from other groups Yes, but they are still sampled, albeit in varying proportions, from the same source populations, referred to in the literature as ASI and ANI, which are themselves composite groups.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > Yes, but they are still sampled, albeit in varying proportions, from the same source populations, referred to in the literature as ASI and ANI. Sure, but that was several thousand years ago. Again, most people are perfectly happy to describe unmixed ancestry for the last 2400 years as being "pure", and the castes go back farther than that.
  - danans 8y ago
    > Again, most people are perfectly happy to describe unmixed ancestry for the last 2400 years as being "pure", and the castes go back farther than that. Just because "most people" are willing to draw that line at 2400 years doesn't make it a valid argument. At most you could say that there is genetic evidence to support the hypothesis that the castes have practiced endogamy for a long time, evidenced by their characteristic genetic admixtures from their shared source populations, and that the caste hierarchy is roughly correlated with ANI admixture rate. That doesn't equate to the word "pure" at all. People are willing to make all sorts of claims about their and others' identities to suit their personal agendas, and it's their right to do so, but they aren't doing science. What about the many millennia that elapsed between the last major shared human population bottleneck and 2400 years ago?

known 8y ago

Indian caste system is 2700 years old as per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Indian_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Indian_history