It's amazing to me how recent these developments are, e.g. that people in Europe looked completely different just 10000 years ago, or that just 40000 years ago a different humanoid species (Neanderthals) existed...
It makes fairly logical sense. Neanderthals were fairly well-installed in Europe when modern humans appeared in Africa. As modern humans would have expanded northward into Europe, done their thing with the Neanderthals, (some breeding, lots of killing), and continued eastward, so the human population still in Africa would probably have no Neanderthal DNA, but the population in Asia would carry the results of some interbreeding with Neanderthals.
The question this brings up is how different are Neanderthals from Homo sapiens? I was taught that the definition of a species is that two individuals could reproduce and have fertile offspring. It seems there are exceptions to this rule, (as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are different species).
I don't think the concept of a species is well defined. Tiger and lions can interbreed, as can donkeys and horses. And then there are ring species. Biology does whatever it does and then humans try to fit words around it.
Interbreeding can be ranked on a scale. The less related the groups are, the more problems there are with reproducing. Perhaps a hard boundary of "species" can be drawn where the probability of successful offspring approaches zero. However, that's difficult to measure in practice.
My understanding is that Neanderthals are now classified as a sub-species rather than a distinct species. So instead of Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis (sp?) we have Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis.
It's not entirely unlike dogs and wolves, which can interbreed fluently. There are dozens of subspecies of Canis Lupus (red wolves, gray wolves, etc, etc), and one of them is Canis Lupus Familiaris, the domestic dog.
The current de facto status is that the concept of species does not exist anymore, or more precisely, it mostly only still exists for historical reasons and coherence with it. When talking about genetic identity nowadays there is only the (type) specimen and genetic distance to other individuals. For example, Svante Pääbo and his team set precedence on purpose in not declaring the Denisovans anything but only describing a group of humans that genetically differ to an unexpected degree from modern humans.
how far of a distance before the line is drawn? by that logic chimps are also " a group of humans that genetically differ to an unexpected degree from modern humans."
There are actually three ways to define a species. The morphological species concept, the biological species concept, and the phylogenetic species concept. Species that can interbreed satisfy the biological species concept but there seems to be more consensus among biologists that constructing a phylogeny is the better way to define species.
This somewhat problematic however because there is rarely enough data about a species to create a complete phylogeny of a species and its common ancestors. Additionally, it is thought that this concept would lead to the naming of many more species than we presently recognize. If you’re interested in this kind of thing I would encourage you to check out the link below!
As the article notes, there seem to have been several significant post-Ice Age re-populations in Europe, of which one or more of the incoming populations may have had little contact with Neanderthals. "Mixed" populations to the east could have survived more intact.
I have not heard that either. According to 23andMe, I'm in the 99th percentile for Neanderthal DNA variants and my ancestry report claims I'm a disappointingly un-diverse 99.9% European.
I don't think I'd ever hear a non white say they are disappointed with being 100% what they are, be they Asian, Black, etc. Maybe there are, I've never home across them, but a few whites have this tendency to wish for having "interesting" ancestry like sen. Warren.
It's something odd. As if they are somewhat uncomfortable on their own skin. Shame is the wrong word, but i can't find the right descriptor. On the other hand, i think this points to social pressures that make people feel that way about themselves.
I agree it's odd, and yet still shared that sense of disappointment in the lack of surprises in my 23andMe report. I also don't think it's entirely irrational.
The most interesting result is the least expected result that doesn't include bad news. Outside relatively small circles, the vast majority of white people will lose none of their privilege or social position if they find out their ancestry includes something unexpected. It's clearly pretty widespread too, because all of the 23andMe advertising includes people ostensibly of European descent who find out they've got unexpected ancestry.
In US, varied ancestry is a norm if I'm not mistaken, so having a "pure" heritage makes you unique. In many countries it's the opposite - the default is "pure" heritage, and having varied background is what makes you stand out.
Also, from the health perspective, varied ancestry is better if I'm not mistaken. Kind of like pure breed animals being less healthy in general, compared to mixtures.
I'm 99.5% European (86% Eastern European), and 0.5% East Asian/Native American. I hoped for more varied ancestry when I received the results.
So you're saying whites have the privilege of wishing they had "interesting" DNA history, but others don't have that privilege, even with all they have in say East Asia. I think it's more with social cues and pressures.
What? I don't get any of either those assertions. People should be comfortable with who they are. I don't think pride is necessary, but also unnecessary and probably detrimental is to feel uncomfortable with yourself, be that anything, in this case ancestry.
How can you not understand black pride? The story of the Negro that survived the racist horrors of white oppression, the voice of the enslaved person that became La Marseillaise sung at the Haitian revolution, that became jazz, that became hip hop. The impossible resistance against the whitewashing and cultral genocide, the freedom and liberty earned by wielding the spirit of the Enlightenment channeled through the black experience. Black identity is more American than America. Freedom from taxation against the freedom to exist. There is no comparison. It's worthy of pride.
There's dignity in guilt, and it's essential for growth. You really don't seem to understand the human condition.
IMO you should never be disappointed with your genetic makeup. It's part of what makes you you, and I can't think of any meaningful difference between people with ancestors from many regions and those with ancestors from one region.
I haven't done a DNA ancestry test yet, but I imagine I would be pretty happy to learn that there were several peoples/races?/cultures behind me, beyond my apparent South Asian heritage. This does not imply that I am ashamed of my origins - quite the contrary, in fact - but that I imagine it would be nice to ... be more, a citizen of the world, in a fashion.
I would expect this outlook of anyone with a cosmopolitan upbringing by default, as well as anyone who has exposed himself or herself to other cultures via media (books, movies, etc..).
I think one problem is that everyone has a different definition of the word 'pride'. Over here in Europe a lot of people think of pride as something you feels when you actively achieve something.
Ran a marathon? You can be proud of this!
You were born white/black/asian/... in France/Turkey/Spain? There is not much to be proud of, at the end of the day it's just pure luck who your parents are and in which culture you are born.
Schopenhauer said it best:
"The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen.
The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes.
But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority."
It's pretty much frowned upon to be in any way proud to be a pale skinned European; mainstream media demands we feel shame for all the oppression we did in the centuries before our birth.
That said, I don't understand how I've can be "proud" of which country you were born in, makes no sense to me.
>I don't understand how I've can be "proud" of which country you were born in, makes no sense to me.
I guess it all depends where you draw the line, do you feel proud of your parents?
Some people will say "No, I only feel proud about what I accomplished myself."
And that's ok, that's his point of view, we could say this is a subjective matter, from my point of view, I feel proud of who I'm, I'm proud of my parents, and then I can extend that line and say I'm proud of my community, my city, my country, my civilization, I'm proud of being part of humanity, obviously that "proudness" will increase when that line is nearer to me, in other words the more relatable to myself the prouder I can be.
You use 'we' to describe your collective, showing you understand the concept of heritage, and then go on and say you don't understand pride in your people.
Only whites seem to have this internal conflict, and that makes far less sense than being proud of the society your people created.
>It's pretty much frowned upon to be in any way proud to be a pale skinned European; mainstream media demands we feel shame for all the oppression we did in the centuries before our birth.
It's Paddy's day on Saturday - how does that celebration square with your claim?
'European'? I don't think you can generalise on a continental scale. Irish people are generally pretty happy about their Irish-ness in my experience. Same with Basques and Greeks, and probably lots of other assorted Europeans
I was born in Canada and I'm definitely proud of it. Not necessarily that I was born here, but that Canada is the way it is and how it has shaped me. I think that is what pride in a nation really is. Americans who are proud to be Americans are this way because they perceive it to be the most free country in the world, and to be a part of that heritage lends something to pride.
Pride can be good and bad. Being proud to succeed as a single parent, or proud of being the first to graduate university in the family.
Proud to be black or proud to be white.... Getting iffy depending on context. Of course, the opposite would be troublesome, ashamed to be black, or ashamed to be white.
Pride in heritage is still important. Genes don't necessarily define a person's success (genes are regulated in expression, and so expression can be changed by environmental factors) but they do anchor an individual to history. They ground a person in eons of time. Being proud to be black or white or anything else is part of that.
I think there is a difference in denial --which I don't propose and overtly and outright saying I'm proud to be "...". Be comfortable with being "..." accept being "..." and not wishing to be anything else.
I hope people feel their heritage is "cool" but I'd rather not have people feel their heritage or a different heritage is "better".
On the other hand, I feel that there are some societies that indeed contributed more to civilization than others. I don't think that's deniable. But I mean as a person one should not feel "better" or "worse" than any other person because of heritage.
I don't think we can say which societies contribute more or less. That's based on the metric of what they are contributing, but overall that discussion is too complex to definitively say who contributes more.
As for feeling "better" I agree with you, only that pride is not necessarily a feeling of superiority. In most cases it is an acknowledgement of something related to the individual that he or she feels is inherently good. Not everyone associates good with better.
I haven't taken a DNA test but I would be very excited to learn I am 99% European. My family doesn't have a lot of historic records as to our origins. We know we technically started in Russia (on my mother's side), and my father is pure Italian, but other than that we don't know jack shit. If my genetic line came from just one region, I would have hope for piecing together my family's ancestry. As it stands, I feel disconnected from my roots.
A lot of people who are "pure X" turn out to be anything but, sometimes in as quickly as three generations. Go for the test and enjoy whatever you get from it.
My friend's father did a DNA test and found out he was some portion Ashkenazi Jew. He went around screaming about it for a week, so proud that his genetic line birthed Albert Einstein.
My parents had always told me their grandparents were part Seminole. I liked that because it made me feel more connected to my home.
To find out (through a 23andMe report showing 99.9% Euro genes) it wasn't true was unsettling, like I'm not really who I thought I was and also have much less of a connection to the area. Also disappointed because it means someone in my family lied to all of us about where they came from.
23andme results are subject to change. A few years ago when they first released their Neanderthal estimates, I was at the top of my contact list, but recently I'm like second to last.
The title of the article Ancient DNA Is Rewriting Human (and Neanderthal) History directly implies that such people are less human due to carrying more Neanderthal DNA. That the subject of the implication is non-Europeans has a long tradition in the mainstream US magazine business. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/from-the...
I'd suggest watching some of the recent lectures of Svante Pääbo on YouTube (and his papers on Google Scholar), he's very good at explaining the latest findings.
Okay someone explain this to me because I don't get it - how can we get the sample of a 40 000 year old specimen and tell that it's species had interbred with humans.
I mean - Neanderthals are pretty closely related to us us, couldn't genetic similarities be a result of that common origin rather than interbreeding. How can DNA tell that apart?
Genes are never perfectly conserved; they accumulate mutations through generations. The rate of mutations can act as a clock, telling us how far back was the common origin of two genes that are similar today.
When we see modern populations that carry neanderthal genes that are better conserved within the population than some human-specific genes are with other human populations, we can infer that the neanderthal intermixing happened after humans became... human.
At large scale, many such inferences can be combined to form a historical map of population mixing and the migrations implied... That's what the research in the article is about.
In another story popular on HN yesterday/today about DNA [0], some of the commenters discussed epigenetics, and the fact that the DNA sequence is simply the "hardware" that encodes what is possible for cells to produce, but there is "software", if you will, above that which determines how sequences of DNA are actually expressed.
In these cases of analyzing really old DNA where only the DNA remains, I wonder how researchers make decisions about selecting what they want to express between varying attributes? I.e., the example used in the article about representing "Cheddar Man" - did they have some basis for selecting the traits to visualize or was it arbitrary?
I'm not sure the hardware/software analogy is useful. It's more like DNA is source code with a bunch of if statements that depend on the chemical environment the cell is in.
Epigenetics can sometimes influence pigmentation, but expression of human skin and hair colors is pretty explicitly genetic, so you can expect the same results from the same genes a mere several thousand years apart.
What an awesome antidote to today's depressing story about white nationalists coopting Black Panther as an affirmation of ethnicity-based political states. If science can keep reminding people how random and fragile current ethnic or national divisions are in the face of time, maybe more people will focus on building knowledge that lasts longer.
I advocate the same perspective towards both genes 'n memes: stop trying to preserve your current configuration verbatim, and start trying to participate in a process that iteratively adapts and improves. Some examples:
- Marry / procreate with an opposite you're attracted to.
- End stasis-inducing IP monopolies.
- Let other people contribute to your codebase when practical.
- Focus on trying to benefit from immigration rather than eliminating it.
- Don't let political units at any level get so powerful that you can never refactor your culture in a different way.
Regarding your contingencies, I put zero probability on my creations (kids, code, businesses) resembling me for long. I wouldn't wish them to as I doubt I'll be useful in their world. I'd like it if they could trace part of their prosperity to values or traits I imparted, but you have to find notions of continuity and contribution that aren't just a distance function from yourself.
> Of two futures, which would you prefer?
> 1. Where your descendants/relatives are alive but have little in common with your values (eg compare bronze age to now)
> 2. You have no genetic descendants/relatives but whatever exists (robots, aliens, planet of the apes) shares your value system.
That's a false choice, based on these flawed assumptions:
- That genetic descent somehow diminishes the transmission of culture (or "memes" as you call it).
- That we don't have many bronze age values today. We do have them, evidenced by the fact that many people follow values of religions established in the bronze age.
- That the inevitable result of what you call a "meme-centric" direction of progress is genetic extinction for humans.
> There are 4B Muslims and Christians, but only 15M Jews, so Abraham has over 250x as many carriers of his ideas as carriers of his genes.
Do we know that Abraham was a specific person whose genes we can trace rather than a mythological character?
Even if you assume he was a real person, how can we be certain that the common ideas in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism originated with him? There's quite a bit of evidence that it was cobbled together over time from many sources (Israel, Egypt, Sumeria, Mesopotamia, etc.)
Are you suggesting that by mating with similar 'ethnicity' that someones genes are more likely to carry on? I thought it was common knowledge that more diverse DNA has a better chance at survival.
Seems like you're suggesting inbreeding is favorable for procreation.
It's complicated. There's the paper linked in the other comment, there's hybrid vigor, and also people with rare phenotypes eg have trouble getting organ donations.
There's a diversity of phenotypes around the world because groups of humans have been in reproductive isolation. I'm sure that will continue for various reasons (assortive mating, religion or immigration restriction like many East Asian countries). From memory you need <2% inter-marriage rate per generation for your group to diverge.
Some people want to preserve reproductively isolated groups, rather than form a larger gene pool (though this is betting against human lust and cheap air travel)
If you are more related to your country than to the average human on earth (true historically), and your country adopt pro-natal policies rather than immigration of people who are genetically distant from you, you would increase the number of genes similar to you in the global population.
Yes, in that hypocritical "this is the strongest, most inevitable way for people to organize, so we have to build hyper-indoctrinated enclaves to protect it" way.
