6 ms·

> There are many earlier papers describing different methods for arriving at similar conclusions. The paper under your link is claiming a recent second bottlen

> There are many earlier papers describing different methods for arriving at similar conclusions. The paper under your link is claiming a recent second bottleneck (in addition to the out-of-Africa one at ~60kya) but the Science paper is claiming an ancient bottleneck at ~900kya. These are very different conclusions. Note that the method in the Science paper is unable to find this second bottleneck directly in non-Africans. The authors have to fix recent population sizes to find it. This doesn't sound right. The new method is also inconsistent with earlier established methods (disclaimer: one of them is mine) which the authors don't have an adequate explanation to. More discussions at: https://twitter.com/aylwyn_scally/status/1697344429135135018 https://twitter.com/aylwyn_scally/status/1697344429135135018

svnt 3y ago
They are very different times, yes, but the idea of a human population bottleneck at all in my experience is foreign to most people outside of the evolutionary anthropology/archaeology/etc fields. Is there more discussion at your link or just the single dismissal post? Maybe I need to log in?
- mistrial9 3y ago
  except, multiple tribal groups have oral history about that
  - rpearl 3y ago
    that is not evidence of a historical fact
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      much of accepted hidtory is not a provable fact. We have just people's word, written or not
    - h0l0cube 3y ago
      It could be classified as a very unreliable tertiary source
    - commonlisp94 3y ago
      Then get ready to throw out most of history, because that's all we have. It doesn't mean it's true, but it's more information than nothing.
      - kristianbrigman 3y ago
        It could mean more than that, or maybe not. Velikovsky had the interesting hypothesis that you could compare this histories of different traditions to see if they synchronize. For example, joshua stopping the sun for three days, which would have been in the evening (you’d stop the sun at sunset, not at noon)… so you can look a Chinese history where it was dark for three days, or aztec history where the sun was about to rise. He does play fast and loose with his source material (based on the ones I’m familiar with) but I think the general idea is interesting…
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Written words are deemed more valid than Spoken words. So tweets are true, but what someone just spoke to me is not-true. Better to take stance that all communication is fallible and has noise. Plato 'wrote' about 'Atlantis'. Written means true? A lot of Roman Historians, like Livy, etc... Embellished or were Propaganda, or even pumped up travel guides. Where some Oral Traditions put a great deal of emphasis on memorization and can be just as good at passing information, even if the information is also wrong. They both have fallibilities. The Telephone effect exists in Oral. But in Written, it is wildly miss-interpreted. But, if across continents, cultures, methods of communication, there are flood myths everywhere. It is ok to wonder if they are based on some common occurrence. Can we put money on an exact date and cause based on some myth? Maybe not, but we can't ignore them either.
  - lazyninja987 3y ago
    [dead]
- fouc 3y ago
  > Maybe I need to log in? There's some followup tweets: > I don't like to be harsh about a paper, but the fanfare around this one makes it necessary to respond. > There are many ways to go wrong when inferring past events from genomic data; the datasets are large and noisy, and computational methods get complicated. > Thus it's essential to demonstrate clearly that your results are not an artefact of data processing or methodology, or the consequence of overfitting to a particular aspect of the data. Simulations are a vital tool for this, and they need to show that your results are robust.. > to alternative scenarios that violate the assumptions of your model. They also need to show that the observed data are indeed consistent with the model you have inferred. Sadly, it's not clear that these requirements have been met in the paper published in Science.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  Every Christian, Jew, and Muslim (over 50% of the world population) have the same two “bottleneck” stories in their traditions and religious texts. I find it hard to believe that the idea is foreign to most people, maybe just most people you interact with.
  - mmastrac 3y ago
    I assume Noah's Ark/great flood and ???. I can't pin down the second.
    - linux2647 3y ago
      Everyone being descended from Adam and Eve
      - flangola7 3y ago
        What I was explained was how they kept reproducing without 100% incest
        gorgoiler 3y ago
        There an amazing number of coincidences that have led to human life existing. I only know of the anthropic principle greatest hits from physics including The Moon, plate tectonics, distance from sun, etc but I assume there are more from the natural world of evolution. So I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the bottleneck population also wiped their bottoms with leaves from a tree that grows only in natural uranium ore, thereby artificially boosting their genetic diversity as well as putting pressure on them to reproduce frequently and often before they reach their radiologically reduced life expectancy of 25.
        neuronic 3y ago
        > amazing number of coincidences All of this in light of the very literal form of survivorship bias. Try a few billion or trillion planets to get the conditions JUST right and there will probably be at least one getting it right. Inhabited by folks who wonder why it was their planet that had everything going for it.
- lambda 3y ago
  https://nitter.net/aylwyn_scally/status/1697344429135135018 https://nitter.net/aylwyn_scally/status/1697344429135135018
- psychoslave 3y ago
  > is foreign to most people outside of the evolutionary anthropology/archaeology/etc fields. I can hardly describe myself as a specialist of any of this domain, but I definitely already heard about this hypothesis. Now median average citizen might not know about it, but that’s a very different statement.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

svnt 3y ago

They are very different times, yes, but the idea of a human population bottleneck at all in my experience is foreign to most people outside of the evolutionary anthropology/archaeology/etc fields. Is there more discussion at your link or just the single dismissal post? Maybe I need to log in?

mistrial9 3y ago
except, multiple tribal groups have oral history about that
- rpearl 3y ago
  that is not evidence of a historical fact
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    much of accepted hidtory is not a provable fact. We have just people's word, written or not
  - h0l0cube 3y ago
    It could be classified as a very unreliable tertiary source
  - commonlisp94 3y ago
    Then get ready to throw out most of history, because that's all we have. It doesn't mean it's true, but it's more information than nothing.
    - kristianbrigman 3y ago
      It could mean more than that, or maybe not. Velikovsky had the interesting hypothesis that you could compare this histories of different traditions to see if they synchronize. For example, joshua stopping the sun for three days, which would have been in the evening (you’d stop the sun at sunset, not at noon)… so you can look a Chinese history where it was dark for three days, or aztec history where the sun was about to rise. He does play fast and loose with his source material (based on the ones I’m familiar with) but I think the general idea is interesting…
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Written words are deemed more valid than Spoken words. So tweets are true, but what someone just spoke to me is not-true. Better to take stance that all communication is fallible and has noise. Plato 'wrote' about 'Atlantis'. Written means true? A lot of Roman Historians, like Livy, etc... Embellished or were Propaganda, or even pumped up travel guides. Where some Oral Traditions put a great deal of emphasis on memorization and can be just as good at passing information, even if the information is also wrong. They both have fallibilities. The Telephone effect exists in Oral. But in Written, it is wildly miss-interpreted. But, if across continents, cultures, methods of communication, there are flood myths everywhere. It is ok to wonder if they are based on some common occurrence. Can we put money on an exact date and cause based on some myth? Maybe not, but we can't ignore them either.
- lazyninja987 3y ago
  [dead]
fouc 3y ago
> Maybe I need to log in? There's some followup tweets: > I don't like to be harsh about a paper, but the fanfare around this one makes it necessary to respond. > There are many ways to go wrong when inferring past events from genomic data; the datasets are large and noisy, and computational methods get complicated. > Thus it's essential to demonstrate clearly that your results are not an artefact of data processing or methodology, or the consequence of overfitting to a particular aspect of the data. Simulations are a vital tool for this, and they need to show that your results are robust.. > to alternative scenarios that violate the assumptions of your model. They also need to show that the observed data are indeed consistent with the model you have inferred. Sadly, it's not clear that these requirements have been met in the paper published in Science.
jonhohle 3y ago
Every Christian, Jew, and Muslim (over 50% of the world population) have the same two “bottleneck” stories in their traditions and religious texts. I find it hard to believe that the idea is foreign to most people, maybe just most people you interact with.
- mmastrac 3y ago
  I assume Noah's Ark/great flood and ???. I can't pin down the second.
  - linux2647 3y ago
    Everyone being descended from Adam and Eve
    - flangola7 3y ago
      What I was explained was how they kept reproducing without 100% incest
      - gorgoiler 3y ago
        There an amazing number of coincidences that have led to human life existing. I only know of the anthropic principle greatest hits from physics including The Moon, plate tectonics, distance from sun, etc but I assume there are more from the natural world of evolution. So I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the bottleneck population also wiped their bottoms with leaves from a tree that grows only in natural uranium ore, thereby artificially boosting their genetic diversity as well as putting pressure on them to reproduce frequently and often before they reach their radiologically reduced life expectancy of 25.
        neuronic 3y ago
        > amazing number of coincidences All of this in light of the very literal form of survivorship bias. Try a few billion or trillion planets to get the conditions JUST right and there will probably be at least one getting it right. Inhabited by folks who wonder why it was their planet that had everything going for it.
lambda 3y ago
https://nitter.net/aylwyn_scally/status/1697344429135135018 https://nitter.net/aylwyn_scally/status/1697344429135135018
psychoslave 3y ago
> is foreign to most people outside of the evolutionary anthropology/archaeology/etc fields. I can hardly describe myself as a specialist of any of this domain, but I definitely already heard about this hypothesis. Now median average citizen might not know about it, but that’s a very different statement.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]