8 ms·
The human family tree, it turns out, is complicated
- Digory 5y agoI know the facts are the facts, but this is depressing. If this holds, it seems our politics are doomed to tribalism and paternalism in the long run.
- lkrubner 5y agoThere is no connection between biology and politics save for what meanings currently active politically actors attempt to assert. Such assertions are purely for current political advantage, they are not made in any kind of good faith effort to discover the truth.
- whatshisface 5y ago>There is no connection between biology and politics Connections between biology and politics: - Municipal water systems have to provide water instead of inert gasses or iron ingots. - Limited human lifespans are directly related to the successor problem of monarchies or dictatorships and are a major reason why democracies are more stable. - Whether or not the public believes what propagandists are saying is determined by what goes on in their brains, which are inscrutable, but undeniably biological. - Minor phenotypical differences are used by troublemakers to start fights, in behaviors ranging from playground mocking, to racism and beyond.
- josefx 5y ago> Limited human lifespans are directly related to the successor problem of monarchies or dictatorships and are a major reason why democracies are more stable. Given how long some monarchies have been around and how quickly some democracies fall to extremism that would actually be interesting to compare.
- kibwen 5y ago> Given how long some monarchies have been around Don't discount survivorship bias. The Japanese monarchy lasted (as a political entity) for 2600 years, but in that time consider how many thousands of other autocracies rose and fell throughout human civilization. It's a bit like pointing at some old, well-preserved houses and saying "they sure made houses to last back in the day", when in fact all the houses from back-in-the-day which were not built to last have long since rotted away, and whose presence cannot attest as a counterexample.
- est31 5y agoYeah it seems to help that you are on an island. The english monarchy has lasted for around the same order of magnitude.
- hnbad 5y ago"Primitive" societies were likely fairly anarchistic and monarchies probably arose from "war chiefs" with religious justifications (think divine right of kings but before Christianity). Representative democracies are fairly recent. Even popular examples like Rome had very strict ideas about who was eligible to vote and even in the US women and Black people hadn't been allowed to vote for the longest time of its existence. I'm not sure what examples of "falling to extremism" you're thinking of, but to pre-empt the two most obvious ones: Weimar Germany was an extremely young republic and its fall to extremism was initiated by conservatives trying to prevent the rise of communists to avoid losing their wealth after the republic had already weakened their political power; and the Soviet Union pretty much directly followed a violent revolution to overthrow a monarchy and jumped right into military dictatorship while having to fight an enemy hellbent on depopulating most of its territory. Most of the others I can think of are successor states to Soviet republics that either were autocratic already or rapidly turned into kleptocracies after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and only adopted the dressings of democracy prior to falling apart. Also most stable monarchies aren't dictatorial. Chinese dynasties were famously bureaucratic and European monarchies had fairly intricate aristocracies that frequently got involved when it came to less clear-cut lines of succession. It's probably best to think of these as oligarchies, which as a category is probably also a good fit for many so-called democracies.
- mhuffman 5y ago>There is no connection between biology and politics save for what meanings currently active politically actors attempt to assert. This is outlandishly untrue! Think about the politics (not "Politics") within your own family. Now extend that out a bit and you have a "tribe" ... and of course that is going to have "political" and "Political" ramifications. And on it goes ... As soon as you get more than one person in a group politics of some sort will emerge. And "natural" groupings have historically been biological.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoI think the point is not that biology is never relevant to politics, but politics isn't inherently based in race. Humans have a huge array of tribal identities and affiliations which cross racial lines. The idea that "natural" groupings are based on race is absurd. Even in the historical context, there are a peletora of examples where personal interest trumps biological alliances and diverse alliances are formed.
- mhuffman 5y ago>I think the point is not that biology is never relevant to politics, but politics isn't inherently based in race. Humans have a huge array of tribal identities and affiliations which cross racial lines. No one said anything about race, but I guess you could consider it implicit historically. However, I could easily see a tribe of people with multiple races, but biologically connected by their genetic relationships. In fact, without looking it up, I would think around the Mediterranean that was common at some time in the past. >The idea that "natural" groupings are based on race is absurd. One, no one specified race. But two, before the rise of empires (and mega-empires) I would defy you to name a single example contrary to that. Before easy transportation, every one local in a society was related one way or another and likely separated from other groups enough for race to count. I don't know how, historically, you can get a more "natural" grouping than that! >Even in the historical context, there are a peletora of examples where personal interest trumps biological alliances and diverse alliances are formed. I would be curious if you can name even one historical example that did not start off with some sort of biological context. All large empires that you can name started off as tribes and eventually grew to incorporate others. Small ones would likely be even more biologically concentrated. Granting that some society can grow and start to incorporate other groupings as you suggest.
- dcow 5y agoIf you’re just discovering that race is a social construct and all of our political bickering is better characterized as tribalism.. well.. that’s not news. But reading this article it does appear that there is distinction between some African lineage and essentially everybody else. So maybe there is or was something innately genetic between those two groups? I think the article makes the assertion that modern humans are all the same species.
- hnbad 5y agoJust to clarify: as the article points out with the image from Wikipedia, the distinction of "some African lineage and essentially everybody else" (i.e. the small-ish group of Africans most populations outside Africa can be traced back to versus the genetic diversity within Africa) does not follow racial lines in any meaningful way. Not only are modern humans all the same species, but race lacks any biological coherence unless you draw the lines exclusively between Black African populations and lump everybody else in with one of them -- which probably isn't what most "race realists" had in mind.
- Digory 5y agoFor thousands of years, people said ancestry produced meaningful differences between populations. That 'construct' held that infinitesimal differences in ancestry could be used to divide society. So discrimination based on race was widespread, even while science acknowledged the races were the same species. The 2000 story said race is just a social construct, because we were all from the same origin. Here the science now seems to say there are real, scientific ancestry differences. If not visual, they are easily determined. So, again, we return to a place where we can't say we all have the same origin. It will take some effort to avoid returning to the older paradigm, and I'm not sure we've got the tools to do it.
- lkrubner 5y agoIn the ongoing debate between the "lumpers" and the "splitters" the splitters are now looking well justified in their belief that you can't take every fossil and lump into a broad category known as "homo erectus". Ian Tattersal has been a leader of the splitters for many years now, and the basic arguments of his books are looking fairly good right now: https://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/0813334829/ https://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/0813... Mind you, so many discoveries have been made recently that each of these books tends to go obsolete quickly in so far as they try to tell a specific story based on the fossils known in a particular year. However, the overall argument for the splitters, that the "homo" genus has many branches, just like any other successful genus, is a strong argument that is reinforced by these recent finds. I link to one of Ian Tattersal's books where he clearly made the argument for the splitters, and did a good job of it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Retric 5y agoIt’s arguable that many existing branches should be consolidated into Homo sapiens including Neanderthals and Denisovans based on generic information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_... As such the lumpers have real support based on current generic information. Anatomically distinct branches aren’t enough to declare something a different species. Discovery however favors splitters as prestige follows from discovery of new branches of humanity.
- msrenee 5y agoI'd expect that kind of rhetoric from one of you lumpers. Seriously though, the more I learn about speciation, the more I realize how imperfect our system is at categorizing life. Obviously lots of cases are pretty clear-cut, but there's so many examples where you almost have to treat every population as its own distinct entity. My definition of species honestly changes depending on the context. For conservation efforts, if you don't look at the separation and genetic distinctness between populations which would happily interbreed if it weren't for geographical restraints, you're liable to lose both genetic diversity and location-specific genetic adaptations that may be present in one population. For human evolution, I don't know what it really matters whether we call it one species or twelve. It's a very artificial system that will never be 100% agreed upon by experts. Being hominid fossils, they'll be studied intently down to the tiniest sliver of bone no matter where they're placed taxonomically. We all like nice, neat categories, but life is much messier than our naming system wants it to be and I'm not sure I really care where we draw these lines. If I'm missing a good reason for it, please educate me.
- brudgers 5y agoStatistically, humans are chimpanzees as p < 5%. Of course, accepting such a thing requires valuing science over theology.
- sharikone 5y agoThat said I have a very strong preference for marrying a human vs a non-human chimpanzee...
- ElViajero 5y agoHmm, if the chimpanzee is rich with a life expectancy of only 35 it may be worth it. On the other side, golddigger is probably not the worse thing that people is going to think about you.
- brudgers 5y agoThat marriage is the basis of counterpoint is consistent with theology. Not with science. Marriage customs are a common means of enforcing discriminatory societal practices (miscegenation, same sex, other religion, etc.). The logical structure of the objection is consistent with all of those…they are plug and play for chimpanzees.
- folli 5y agoCare to elaborate? I hope you're not referring to DNA homology.
- peter303 5y agoHarvard professor David Reich wrote a popular science book "Who We Are" in 2018 about the analysis of of 900+ ancient human genomes. He identified the subpopulations mentioned in thus article, plus additional ones that dont have snappy names yet. I asked him at an archeology talk in early 2021 if he had an update to his book. He answered he now has 5000 genomes. But the main elements of his 2018 book still hold.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoI feel like this is critiquing a theory that either I'm not familiar with, or is so much of a straw man that I don't recognize it. > The true diversity and complexity of human evolution over the last few hundred millennia surpasses even the most unhinged imaginings we might have hazarded just a short generation ago. But greater clarity has left us with a messier and less elegant narrative. Our species’ status, it turns out, is “complicated.” What was the elegant but overly simple narrative? What's an example of an "unhinged imagining" that we'd now accept as boringly true? How long is a short generation?
- lkrubner 5y agoAs they say, they are responding to the consensus that existed around 2000 that the Sapiens story was a straightforward "out of Africa" story.
- tails4e 5y agoThis may be an ignorant comment (as this is not my area), but I've ways wondered if say acient remains of someone like shaq were found and dated to be the same as a man 5ft tall, would we claim they were different species, or is there something more significant that divides ancient proto human groups that lived at the same time.
- lkrubner 5y agoNot on the basis of height, nor any one characteristic. They'd look at the teeth, too, and the basic shape of the eye socket, among other things. There has to be several differences before you claim a new species.