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That part jumped out at me. Why on earth do they need the permission of the descendents of someone who lived 500+ years ago? And how on earth are they even goin

That part jumped out at me. Why on earth do they need the permission of the descendents of someone who lived 500+ years ago? And how on earth are they even going to get it? Surely even if one guy says it's ok (and you can prove he's descended from a body you found), what happens if another person says no? It's obviously nonsense - so why claim it? The part about indiginous research is kind of mad as well - "This research places unnecessary responsibilities and obligations on Indigenous communities to participate in microbiome research". We're talking about a mouth swab here. It makes me glad I don't work in academia!

basisword 3y ago
Why do you think you’re entitled to dig up peoples bodies and conduct research on indigenous people? That kind of entitlement is the cause of everything bad in the tech industry.
- stareatgoats 3y ago
  Except we're not talking about "indigenous people". The study wants to investigate the teeth of pre-industrial Europeans, the polar opposite of indigenous people in that slightly vague dichotomy.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    Hey, tone it down a little. I'm indigenous European, you might be talking about my great great great great great great grandparents here. /s
    - draugadrotten 3y ago
      > I'm indigenous European When Netflix depicts indigenous European as POC, is that Blackface or Historical Accuracy or both? I am confused.
      - defrost 3y ago
        Both. The bulk of modern Europe was covered in thick glacial ice, when it receded the "first Europeans" walked in from the south. A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black. Now throw in a steady low rate of long distance trade - traders travelled, as did those enslaved and traded. The Roman settlements in England were mainly established by people not from modern Italy, they came from across a broad part of the full Roman Empire, one fort was manned by Africans. So - legitimately mostly white skinned people with a small percentage of every other shade. Depending very much which bit of "Europe" you're looking at.
        qwytw 3y ago
        > A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black. IIRC the current theory is that genes responsible for white skin in Europe were initially introduced by farmers migrating from Anatolia and the middle east (white skin appearings somewhere there or closer to the Caucasus). They almost entirely replaced the indigenous much darker skin hunter gatherers in many areas of Europe, > one fort was manned by Africans. North Africans. Who were most likely more "white" back then than now (Trans-Saharan slave trade which transported millions of people from Sub-Saharan Arica wasn't a thing back then).
        defrost 3y ago
        > North Africans. Who were most likely more "white" back then than now So .. easily confused with Swedes then? Or as dark if not darker than (say) Greeks and therefore People Of Some Colour? How rich was the Kingdom of Aksum and how much trade did they do with India and the Roman Empire, did they travel afar from their own land? What of their successors, the Abyssinians, did they not once have "all the gold"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleb_of_Axum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleb_of_Axum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_to_Abyssinia#/media/File:Hijra_Abyssinia_(Rashid_ad-Din).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_to_Abyssinia#/media/... As I stated, travelling throughout Europe, through the territories of the Roman Empire, all manner of complexions could be seen, some less frequently than others - but there were certainly rich, powerful, and very dark traders from abroad along with no shortage of Mediterrian complexions.
    - im3w1l 3y ago
      The assumption is that unlike minorities, indigenous Europeans are represented by their governments. As Europe becomes more diverse, that may become less true and it will be necessary to ask them directly.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    You appear to be missing the part where these are not British scientists researching British remains in Britain. Yes, the Americans and Australians should ask before taking British remains from Britain away for research in their labs. I don't see where the research is conducted but there isn't any mention of collaboration with the UK so this would involve exporting the remains.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      Consistent with the precedent the British established with all of those Egyptian mummies? I mean, I agree they need permission, but it’s at least a little ironic…
      - samus 3y ago
        Good example for why such rules were introduced. Although not perfectly applicable since there is no hope to locate an Egyptian mummy's heirs nowadays. Although we are quite sure that they would have disapproved.
        sokoloff 3y ago
        > teeth of 235 individuals who were buried across 27 archaeological sites in England and Scotland from about 2,200 B.C. to A.D. 1853 Some (most?) of these remains have the same order of magnitude problem to find descendants as Egyptian mummies would.
  - seszett 3y ago
    > pre-industrial Europeans, the polar opposite of indigenous people I don't understand what you mean? Why would pre-industrial Europeans not be indigenous? Because they (in Britain) partly displaced the previous Celtic inhabitants (who themselves had likely displaced others before them)?
- leoedin 3y ago
  You completely missed my point. How can anyone possibly ask the descendants of 500+ year old plague victims whether they consent to research on their teeth. Do you just go round knocking on every door in a 10 mile radius? I'm British, and so might be descended from the bodies they did research on. They didn't ask me - and they shouldn't have to. Fine, clear it with an ethics committee, be open about what you're doing and debate the implications. But asking the descendants? That's not practical. For the record, I've never conducted research on indigenous people - and have no plans to.
  - eigenket 3y ago
    > How can anyone possibly ask the descendants of 500+ year old plague victims whether they consent to research on their teeth. Do you just go round knocking on every door in a 10 mile radius? You ask the government.
- dijit 3y ago
  There's a limit, surely. After 3 generations of nobody having known you living: surely your body must have reverted to general property. I don't want to start a holy war, I understand sentimentality. But if you dug up my great grandfathers great grandfather then honestly I have absolutely no connection to the man and his body could be anywhere on earth. It's not my property and despite sharing some of my genes it's part of the earth at that point. What once was a man merely returned to the atoms and microbes of the planet that bore it.
  - InSteady 3y ago
    Many indigenous cultures care deeply about their ancestors. And not just the most recent batch of them. Your idea that the remains of the dead should become "general property" that can be harvested, used, and/or abused as anyone sees fit is both absurd and offensive. Sorry, but we are sentimental creatures pretty much as a rule. We do get to pick and choose what we are sentimental about (to some degree), but it turns out a lot of people care about their ancestors and perhaps even the ancestors of other people in their community/culture who they aren't directly related to. >What once was a man merely returned to the atoms and microbes of the planet that bore it. Bones last for centuries, millennia, and longer. In fact bones are the very thing we are discussing (in the form of teeth), and they are obviously very much intact beyond your arbitrary 3 generation cutoff. So while your sentiment may be noble and erudite, it's not relevant at all.
    - dijit 3y ago
      thats kinda my point though. If you accidentally come across 300 year old human remains then of course care should be taken. However after 8 generations there is already so little connection left, keeping in mind 8 generations is roughly 160-240 years. Yes, we are sentimental creatures, however if we hold that human remains are permanently sacred then we will run out of habitable space on the planet if we continue to bury our dead.
  - b800h 3y ago
    That would be massively influenced by culture. An atheist materialist from the West is going to have a totally different view to someone from a culture where burial has all sorts of codified behaviours and beliefs associated with it.
- dghughes 3y ago
  How many bodies do UK museums have stolen from other countries? The British museum alone states 6,000 human remains of which I don't know how many are non-UK. >"Held in a number of departments for display and research, over 6,000 human remains are in the care of the Museum" https://www.britishmuseum.org/our-work/departments/human-remains https://www.britishmuseum.org/our-work/departments/human-rem...
mschuster91 3y ago
> Why on earth do they need the permission of the descendents of someone who lived 500+ years ago? Because there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead (e.g. shrunken heads) in the past, and there are numerous legal issues being fought to this day about repatriation of human remains back to their home countries. There is no need to pile more case on the already large pile.
- leoedin 3y ago
  These bodies are British.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Being studied by Americans and Australians. If it is bad for the British to take human remains from other countries, then we should apply the same logic to exporting British human remains.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > Being studied by Americans and Australians. And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent.
      - eigenket 3y ago
        > And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent. We (the UK) don't care. If you try to export human remains from the UK to another country (the study is being done by US and Australian universities), without the correct permissions you're going to have a bad time.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  > there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead There is a rich history of everyone looting graves. This isn't a colonial vs other thing here. Sacking of places is common and still happens (see syria, afganistan & the sudans. ) We just happen to know about the stuff the western people did because they documented it and put it on display. (unlike the romans, persians, greeks, byzantines, ottermans, et al. didn't loose it to the next empire, yet.) There used to be a bunch of TV shows where they'd routinely dig up bones and put them on shelves in storage. Applying to exhume a body isn't that difficult in the UK either: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence
informatimago 3y ago
Indeed. 500 years is about 16 generations, so any ancestor of that age may have 65536 or even more descendents. You'd need to locate them and ask them all permission. How does it work, is it majority vote? Unanimous vote? All European people have a unique male ancestor 300 generations away. If you locate remains of that age, do you have to ask nobody or everybody? (Depending on whether it's the male ancestor of all of us, or some other male whose last descendent died long ago?)
- samus 3y ago
  Human societies have elaborate processes to solve this issue: inheritance laws. In case no heirs can be located anymore (body can't be identified, records are missing, the line has died out, etc.) the state is the heir by default and makes the rules.
KaiserPro 3y ago
https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence I suspect its part of the license to exhume the bodies. (Assuming that they haven't already been removed from the ground)
eigenket 3y ago
This research is being done by US and Australian universities on remains from the UK. If you turn up in the UK and try to dig up random skeletons and send them to the US or Australia without the correct permissions, you're gonna get arrested. Probably very quickly, probably at the first grave yard you visit. You get the permission from whoever owns the land the graves are in, as well as the UK government.
- stareatgoats 3y ago
  If I get your drift, you mean that research papers should henceforth have disclaimer, saying that "no law was broken during our research"? Fair enough, but I don't think that's what they were signaling by the quote in question somehow.
  - eigenket 3y ago
    I think the point is that there are many places where (especially indigenous) remains don't have the same level of legal protection as they do in the UK. The universities also want to make sure their researchers get permission from whoever they should/can even in those places.

basisword 3y ago

Why do you think you’re entitled to dig up peoples bodies and conduct research on indigenous people? That kind of entitlement is the cause of everything bad in the tech industry.

stareatgoats 3y ago
Except we're not talking about "indigenous people". The study wants to investigate the teeth of pre-industrial Europeans, the polar opposite of indigenous people in that slightly vague dichotomy.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  Hey, tone it down a little. I'm indigenous European, you might be talking about my great great great great great great grandparents here. /s
  - draugadrotten 3y ago
    > I'm indigenous European When Netflix depicts indigenous European as POC, is that Blackface or Historical Accuracy or both? I am confused.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Both. The bulk of modern Europe was covered in thick glacial ice, when it receded the "first Europeans" walked in from the south. A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black. Now throw in a steady low rate of long distance trade - traders travelled, as did those enslaved and traded. The Roman settlements in England were mainly established by people not from modern Italy, they came from across a broad part of the full Roman Empire, one fort was manned by Africans. So - legitimately mostly white skinned people with a small percentage of every other shade. Depending very much which bit of "Europe" you're looking at.
      - qwytw 3y ago
        > A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black. IIRC the current theory is that genes responsible for white skin in Europe were initially introduced by farmers migrating from Anatolia and the middle east (white skin appearings somewhere there or closer to the Caucasus). They almost entirely replaced the indigenous much darker skin hunter gatherers in many areas of Europe, > one fort was manned by Africans. North Africans. Who were most likely more "white" back then than now (Trans-Saharan slave trade which transported millions of people from Sub-Saharan Arica wasn't a thing back then).
        defrost 3y ago
        > North Africans. Who were most likely more "white" back then than now So .. easily confused with Swedes then? Or as dark if not darker than (say) Greeks and therefore People Of Some Colour? How rich was the Kingdom of Aksum and how much trade did they do with India and the Roman Empire, did they travel afar from their own land? What of their successors, the Abyssinians, did they not once have "all the gold"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleb_of_Axum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleb_of_Axum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_to_Abyssinia#/media/File:Hijra_Abyssinia_(Rashid_ad-Din).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_to_Abyssinia#/media/... As I stated, travelling throughout Europe, through the territories of the Roman Empire, all manner of complexions could be seen, some less frequently than others - but there were certainly rich, powerful, and very dark traders from abroad along with no shortage of Mediterrian complexions.
  - im3w1l 3y ago
    The assumption is that unlike minorities, indigenous Europeans are represented by their governments. As Europe becomes more diverse, that may become less true and it will be necessary to ask them directly.
- happymellon 3y ago
  You appear to be missing the part where these are not British scientists researching British remains in Britain. Yes, the Americans and Australians should ask before taking British remains from Britain away for research in their labs. I don't see where the research is conducted but there isn't any mention of collaboration with the UK so this would involve exporting the remains.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Consistent with the precedent the British established with all of those Egyptian mummies? I mean, I agree they need permission, but it’s at least a little ironic…
    - samus 3y ago
      Good example for why such rules were introduced. Although not perfectly applicable since there is no hope to locate an Egyptian mummy's heirs nowadays. Although we are quite sure that they would have disapproved.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        > teeth of 235 individuals who were buried across 27 archaeological sites in England and Scotland from about 2,200 B.C. to A.D. 1853 Some (most?) of these remains have the same order of magnitude problem to find descendants as Egyptian mummies would.
- seszett 3y ago
  > pre-industrial Europeans, the polar opposite of indigenous people I don't understand what you mean? Why would pre-industrial Europeans not be indigenous? Because they (in Britain) partly displaced the previous Celtic inhabitants (who themselves had likely displaced others before them)?
leoedin 3y ago
You completely missed my point. How can anyone possibly ask the descendants of 500+ year old plague victims whether they consent to research on their teeth. Do you just go round knocking on every door in a 10 mile radius? I'm British, and so might be descended from the bodies they did research on. They didn't ask me - and they shouldn't have to. Fine, clear it with an ethics committee, be open about what you're doing and debate the implications. But asking the descendants? That's not practical. For the record, I've never conducted research on indigenous people - and have no plans to.
- eigenket 3y ago
  > How can anyone possibly ask the descendants of 500+ year old plague victims whether they consent to research on their teeth. Do you just go round knocking on every door in a 10 mile radius? You ask the government.
dijit 3y ago
There's a limit, surely. After 3 generations of nobody having known you living: surely your body must have reverted to general property. I don't want to start a holy war, I understand sentimentality. But if you dug up my great grandfathers great grandfather then honestly I have absolutely no connection to the man and his body could be anywhere on earth. It's not my property and despite sharing some of my genes it's part of the earth at that point. What once was a man merely returned to the atoms and microbes of the planet that bore it.
- InSteady 3y ago
  Many indigenous cultures care deeply about their ancestors. And not just the most recent batch of them. Your idea that the remains of the dead should become "general property" that can be harvested, used, and/or abused as anyone sees fit is both absurd and offensive. Sorry, but we are sentimental creatures pretty much as a rule. We do get to pick and choose what we are sentimental about (to some degree), but it turns out a lot of people care about their ancestors and perhaps even the ancestors of other people in their community/culture who they aren't directly related to. >What once was a man merely returned to the atoms and microbes of the planet that bore it. Bones last for centuries, millennia, and longer. In fact bones are the very thing we are discussing (in the form of teeth), and they are obviously very much intact beyond your arbitrary 3 generation cutoff. So while your sentiment may be noble and erudite, it's not relevant at all.
  - dijit 3y ago
    thats kinda my point though. If you accidentally come across 300 year old human remains then of course care should be taken. However after 8 generations there is already so little connection left, keeping in mind 8 generations is roughly 160-240 years. Yes, we are sentimental creatures, however if we hold that human remains are permanently sacred then we will run out of habitable space on the planet if we continue to bury our dead.
- b800h 3y ago
  That would be massively influenced by culture. An atheist materialist from the West is going to have a totally different view to someone from a culture where burial has all sorts of codified behaviours and beliefs associated with it.
dghughes 3y ago
How many bodies do UK museums have stolen from other countries? The British museum alone states 6,000 human remains of which I don't know how many are non-UK. >"Held in a number of departments for display and research, over 6,000 human remains are in the care of the Museum" https://www.britishmuseum.org/our-work/departments/human-remains https://www.britishmuseum.org/our-work/departments/human-rem...

mschuster91 3y ago

> Why on earth do they need the permission of the descendents of someone who lived 500+ years ago? Because there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead (e.g. shrunken heads) in the past, and there are numerous legal issues being fought to this day about repatriation of human remains back to their home countries. There is no need to pile more case on the already large pile.

leoedin 3y ago
These bodies are British.
- happymellon 3y ago
  Being studied by Americans and Australians. If it is bad for the British to take human remains from other countries, then we should apply the same logic to exporting British human remains.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > Being studied by Americans and Australians. And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent.
    - eigenket 3y ago
      > And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent. We (the UK) don't care. If you try to export human remains from the UK to another country (the study is being done by US and Australian universities), without the correct permissions you're going to have a bad time.
KaiserPro 3y ago
> there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead There is a rich history of everyone looting graves. This isn't a colonial vs other thing here. Sacking of places is common and still happens (see syria, afganistan & the sudans. ) We just happen to know about the stuff the western people did because they documented it and put it on display. (unlike the romans, persians, greeks, byzantines, ottermans, et al. didn't loose it to the next empire, yet.) There used to be a bunch of TV shows where they'd routinely dig up bones and put them on shelves in storage. Applying to exhume a body isn't that difficult in the UK either: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence

informatimago 3y ago

Indeed. 500 years is about 16 generations, so any ancestor of that age may have 65536 or even more descendents. You'd need to locate them and ask them all permission. How does it work, is it majority vote? Unanimous vote? All European people have a unique male ancestor 300 generations away. If you locate remains of that age, do you have to ask nobody or everybody? (Depending on whether it's the male ancestor of all of us, or some other male whose last descendent died long ago?)

samus 3y ago
Human societies have elaborate processes to solve this issue: inheritance laws. In case no heirs can be located anymore (body can't be identified, records are missing, the line has died out, etc.) the state is the heir by default and makes the rules.

KaiserPro 3y ago

https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence I suspect its part of the license to exhume the bodies. (Assuming that they haven't already been removed from the ground)

eigenket 3y ago

This research is being done by US and Australian universities on remains from the UK. If you turn up in the UK and try to dig up random skeletons and send them to the US or Australia without the correct permissions, you're gonna get arrested. Probably very quickly, probably at the first grave yard you visit. You get the permission from whoever owns the land the graves are in, as well as the UK government.

stareatgoats 3y ago
If I get your drift, you mean that research papers should henceforth have disclaimer, saying that "no law was broken during our research"? Fair enough, but I don't think that's what they were signaling by the quote in question somehow.
- eigenket 3y ago
  I think the point is that there are many places where (especially indigenous) remains don't have the same level of legal protection as they do in the UK. The universities also want to make sure their researchers get permission from whoever they should/can even in those places.