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> One clear conclusion is that modern popular concepts of human racial and ethnic groups have little connection with the actual biological-genetic history of in
by User23 3y ago
> One clear conclusion is that modern popular concepts of human racial and ethnic groups have little connection with the actual biological-genetic history of individual modern humans, they're mostly artificial (which is why claims about 'race-based biological weapons' are nonsense, for example).
This isn't really clear at all and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. For example, consumer DNA testing pretty reliably agrees with self-reported genealogical claims. Race has become a loaded word, but we understand population genetics pretty well and the effects of long periods of genetic isolation between different population groups are very much measurable.
The claim that it's impossible to develop a bioweapon that targets some genomic pattern that's common in descendants of some formerly long term isolated population and uncommon in others doesn't appear well-supported. In fact, nature already did this herself, as is well attested by the introduction of Eurasian diseases to the Americas.
- astrange 3y ago> This isn't really clear at all and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. For example, consumer DNA testing pretty reliably agrees with self-reported genealogical claims. The DNA testing is associating you with a cluster; that cluster could be any "size" and isn't based on specific patterns. (And it's fundamentally not causation; you can more or less move anywhere you want and have children with anyone you want.) There's also a selection effect that they don't show you the clusters that they can't make work. Also often not true; for fun, look at /r/23andMe for white people from Oklahoma and you'll see it's surprisingly common that their parents told them they were part Cherokee when they aren't even 1% native. Famously happened to Elizabeth Warren, but it's not just her.
- User23 3y agoThe causation is in the past. Up until about 500 years ago there was little to no gene flow between a number of major population groups. Obviously there has been subsequent hybridization, but we can detect that too. The largest pre-1492 hybrid groups I know of are central Asian for obvious reasons, like the Uyghur people. Last I checked you can’t legally have children with anyone you want in any jurisdiction. You have to get consent and that’s often withheld on the basis of apparent ancestry. Cultural and social factors also make it less common than it would be by random chance. Elizabeth Warren tested out something like ~1/64th Cherokee I thought? And thanks to the wonders of meiosis you could genealogically have relatively recent ancestors of some group without any genetic markers.
- lawlessone 3y agoThose diseases introduced the Americas didn't target specific races. Eurasian peoples could still get them too but had some immunity. If Eurasian people were immune we never would have carried these diseases with us. Saying that...shamefully it was consciously used as weapon in some instances.
- photochemsyn 3y agoEven if someone has something like a specific immune system genetic profile that makes them more susceptible to a particular virus than other people, that genetic marker is extremely unlikely to correlate at all closely with any socially defined racial or ethnic group. The effects of European diseases on native American populations is a red herring in this context, as modern populations are increasingly interbred and not isolated, and even with that case, it's not entirely clear that it was genetic vs. developmental, i.e. European children who survived to adulthood likely had been exposed to those diseases when young, while native American adults had not - so if they had been exposed as children, there could have been no difference in susceptibilty.