5 ms·

All of those people you've named can and do look like one another, depending on circumstance. Every trait you can think of that you'd list as a "characteristic

All of those people you've named can and do look like one another, depending on circumstance. Every trait you can think of that you'd list as a "characteristic" of one of the groups you've named can be found in abundance in numerous other places as well, or accounted for due to environmental factors. There is no "canonical" "Swede" or "Arab". Your reliance on stereotype is not only racist but it's factually wrong. This is well studied, and if you are actually curious, there are many, many sources of information about this topic you can find yourself. Race does not exist, genetically. Period.

barry-cotter 4y ago
I didn’t say anything about race. The word is useless, imprecise. There’s no canonical Swede or Arab? You don’t say. As I mentioned no one who looks like a Swede existed 5,000 years ago. That there is overlap between population characteristics does not mean they are identical. Some populations don’t overlap though. Healthy Pygmy and Maasai adult men do not overlap in height distribution. If you restrict your sample of Swedes to those with all ancestors born in Sweden in 1800 and do a similar restriction for Congolese there will be no overlap in skin color.
- TameAntelope 4y ago
  You definitely keep on talking about race. "Swede" is a race. "Arab" is a race, as you use it. There absolutely were ancient people who shared genetic traits (and therefore some expressed characteristics) with modern Swedish people. There literally must have been, that's how genetics work, and 5,000 years is barely a blink, genetically. What you are conflating (among many, many things) are environmental impacts on human maturation with genetics, and in exactly the same way that the eugenicists of the early 1900s were attempting to do. Every single thing you've said so far has been thoroughly debunked in the ensuing 100 years. You are spouting old, racist tropes, and I assume don't even know it. But maybe you do know it, and maybe that's the point.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    > There absolutely were ancient people who shared genetic traits (and therefore some expressed characteristics) with modern Swedish people. There literally must have been, that's how genetics work, and 5,000 years is barely a blink, genetically. That’s kind of my point. 5,000 years ago there were no people who looked like Swedes. Now there are because of selection pressures. A new genotype came into existence by working on standing variation and some de novo mutations. If we agree that selection pressures can radically change the appearance of a people then there’s not much to disagree on. Evolution can work on many things apart from physical appears. Different places have different selection pressures, with the obvious consequences.
    - TameAntelope 4y ago
      > 5,000 years ago there were no people who looked like Swedes. Now there are because of selection pressures. 100% false. You need to realize that. 5,000 years is not enough time to do anything significant, genetically.
      - User23 4y ago
        It absolutely is if there is a severe population bottleneck that selects for some trait in the survivors.
        TameAntelope 4y ago
        ...which has never happened in human history. Bottlenecks? Yes. Bottlenecks that selected specifically for a specific gene? No.
        barry-cotter 4y ago
        Tibetans and Andeans both have adaptations for living at high altitudes. The Tibetan ones are better because they come from Denisovans, predating the existence of modern humans. There’s been massive positive selection on lactose persistence. 5,000 years ago no human adults could digest lactase. The differences in diabetes among human populations track closely with length of time they have been using agriculture.
User23 4y ago
> Race does not exist, genetically. Period. And yet ancestry.com can comfortably tell anyone which continental scale human population or populations they are descended from and that happens to map pretty neatly to the US Census Bureau's notion of race. Being aware that major geographic features of the Earth such as the Atlantic Ocean, the Himalayas, and the Sahara Desert were more or less impermeable barriers to gene flow between continental human populations until about five centuries ago isn't racist and you should stop calling people names.
- TameAntelope 4y ago
  Ancestry.com simply does not do what you're claiming here. The whole "fun" of ancestry.com is that each person who does it shows up in surprising places across the globe, regardless of their supposed "race", because genetics don't adhere to any concept of "race" as it exists in culture. And the this Barrier Theory was proposed by eugenicists in the 20s and thoroughly debunked by the 30s.
  - User23 4y ago
    Please tell us more about the significant gene flow between Europe and North America prior to the Age of Sail.
- astrange 4y ago
  It can tell you which ancestral population you come from decently well, not totally accurately - on 23andMe "French & German" is a group but has really poor recall, and "Latin American" is not a group nor "Aboriginal Australian" despite how possible they look. But that's just clustering and it would work on any random groups you chose. In particular, it would still work if they picked a group where none of the members were related to each other (and indeed that's how it works now). As long as you're related to one of them it'd still be able to show you're a member of it.

barry-cotter 4y ago

I didn’t say anything about race. The word is useless, imprecise. There’s no canonical Swede or Arab? You don’t say. As I mentioned no one who looks like a Swede existed 5,000 years ago. That there is overlap between population characteristics does not mean they are identical. Some populations don’t overlap though. Healthy Pygmy and Maasai adult men do not overlap in height distribution. If you restrict your sample of Swedes to those with all ancestors born in Sweden in 1800 and do a similar restriction for Congolese there will be no overlap in skin color.

TameAntelope 4y ago
You definitely keep on talking about race. "Swede" is a race. "Arab" is a race, as you use it. There absolutely were ancient people who shared genetic traits (and therefore some expressed characteristics) with modern Swedish people. There literally must have been, that's how genetics work, and 5,000 years is barely a blink, genetically. What you are conflating (among many, many things) are environmental impacts on human maturation with genetics, and in exactly the same way that the eugenicists of the early 1900s were attempting to do. Every single thing you've said so far has been thoroughly debunked in the ensuing 100 years. You are spouting old, racist tropes, and I assume don't even know it. But maybe you do know it, and maybe that's the point.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  > There absolutely were ancient people who shared genetic traits (and therefore some expressed characteristics) with modern Swedish people. There literally must have been, that's how genetics work, and 5,000 years is barely a blink, genetically. That’s kind of my point. 5,000 years ago there were no people who looked like Swedes. Now there are because of selection pressures. A new genotype came into existence by working on standing variation and some de novo mutations. If we agree that selection pressures can radically change the appearance of a people then there’s not much to disagree on. Evolution can work on many things apart from physical appears. Different places have different selection pressures, with the obvious consequences.
  - TameAntelope 4y ago
    > 5,000 years ago there were no people who looked like Swedes. Now there are because of selection pressures. 100% false. You need to realize that. 5,000 years is not enough time to do anything significant, genetically.
    - User23 4y ago
      It absolutely is if there is a severe population bottleneck that selects for some trait in the survivors.
      - TameAntelope 4y ago
        ...which has never happened in human history. Bottlenecks? Yes. Bottlenecks that selected specifically for a specific gene? No.
        barry-cotter 4y ago
        Tibetans and Andeans both have adaptations for living at high altitudes. The Tibetan ones are better because they come from Denisovans, predating the existence of modern humans. There’s been massive positive selection on lactose persistence. 5,000 years ago no human adults could digest lactase. The differences in diabetes among human populations track closely with length of time they have been using agriculture.

User23 4y ago

> Race does not exist, genetically. Period. And yet ancestry.com can comfortably tell anyone which continental scale human population or populations they are descended from and that happens to map pretty neatly to the US Census Bureau's notion of race. Being aware that major geographic features of the Earth such as the Atlantic Ocean, the Himalayas, and the Sahara Desert were more or less impermeable barriers to gene flow between continental human populations until about five centuries ago isn't racist and you should stop calling people names.

TameAntelope 4y ago
Ancestry.com simply does not do what you're claiming here. The whole "fun" of ancestry.com is that each person who does it shows up in surprising places across the globe, regardless of their supposed "race", because genetics don't adhere to any concept of "race" as it exists in culture. And the this Barrier Theory was proposed by eugenicists in the 20s and thoroughly debunked by the 30s.
- User23 4y ago
  Please tell us more about the significant gene flow between Europe and North America prior to the Age of Sail.
astrange 4y ago
It can tell you which ancestral population you come from decently well, not totally accurately - on 23andMe "French & German" is a group but has really poor recall, and "Latin American" is not a group nor "Aboriginal Australian" despite how possible they look. But that's just clustering and it would work on any random groups you chose. In particular, it would still work if they picked a group where none of the members were related to each other (and indeed that's how it works now). As long as you're related to one of them it'd still be able to show you're a member of it.