A new preprint has just appeared at
bioRxiv on the Mesolithic to Neolithic transition and resulting massive population shift in Britain. It features genome-wide data from six Mesolithic and 67 Neolithic individuals, including the famous Cheddar Man.
Population Replacement in Early Neolithic Britain by Brace et al.
The peculiar thing about this preprint is that it doesn't list the Y-haplogroups of the male ancients. However, it's been rumored for a while that Cheddar Man belongs to Y-haplogroup C (for instance, see
here). Has this now been confirmed officially anywhere?
On a related note, the guys at
DNAGeeks have been working on a range of Cheddar Man products (see
here). So for a few bucks you can get yourself a Cheddar Man tee or wall print based on this arty depiction of the Mesolithic British forager. Yes, his resemblance to pop icon Prince is indeed uncanny.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Still, I dislike it how the media are trying to equate the Cheddar Man with modern day Black Africans. This is truly an absurd an preposterous assertion on their part. He also does not resemble Prince, not in the least bit. Genetically, he was not a Subsaharan African and would most certainly not cluster with them. Now the media is going to use this as another excuse to justify mass migration from Subsaharan Africa into Europe.
ReplyDeleteDavidski, could you add Cheddar Man to your global PCA chart?
ReplyDelete@Kanishka,
ReplyDelete"Still, I dislike it how the media are trying to equate the Cheddar Man with modern day Black Africans. "
I agree. Tomorrow, I'm going to post a youtube video where I debunk claims like that made about Cheddar man.
Do native americans have the SLC24A5/ SLC45A2 light skin alleles?
ReplyDeleteI would have thought Cheddar Man's skin would look more like that of a 'red indian'.
what a shame the new lows these SJW's drop to in order to propagandize and replace the true progeny of Neanderthal & proto Indo-Europeans
ReplyDelete@Philippe
ReplyDeleteCheddar Man's genome hasn't been released yet. It will be when the Brace et al. preprint is published in a journal.
But when I do eventually run him in my global PCA, he'll no doubt cluster with Loschbour and Rochedane, the other indigenous Western European Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) in the analysis, and indeed often not too far away from other ancient and modern-day Europeans, including modern-day Brits.
As an African-American, on the other hand, Prince would cluster somewhere between Sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans in my global PCA.
Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI lightened the skin colour of Cheddar Man in photoshop to see what he would look like:
https://i.imgur.com/KXPyfVq.jpg
There has been a lot of poo-pooing in the media regarding Cheddar Man. A couple of points to be made based on already known information about him and my thoughts:
ReplyDelete1.) As David said, the actual paper has not been published yet on his genome.
2.) One person is not indicative of the entire population.
3.) Cheddar Man was lactose intolerant, most likely had blue or gray eyes (I believe they said a 76% chance), and his Mt-HG from a previous study claimed he was U5. Y-HG may have been either C1b or I (my guesses).
4.) He makes up the population called WHGs. This could indicate his ancestors took refuge in Iberia during the LGM. However, some articles are claiming he came from the Middle East, but I believe this is a misunderstanding of the Near Eastern affinity WHGs have (see: http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2016/05/villabruna-cluster-near-eastern-migrants.html).
5.) He seemed to have lacked the derived alleles for SLC24A5 rs1426654 and SLC45A2 rs16891982, which indicates he did not have pale skin like Modern Europeans. It is unknown if they tested for the genes that cause light skin in East Asians (i.e. OCA2 His615Arg, TYRP2 rs2031526, MC1R rs885479, and ATRN). The blue eye gene OCA2/HERC2 seems to have some effect on lightening skin. There are also SNPs on the MFSD12 gene that, in their derived form, cause very dark to black skin. It is unknown as of now if he was tested for this. Though I imagine he did not have the derived MFSD12 genes, indicating not very dark skin.
6.) I believe the original reconstruction had a knot on his head (maybe a birth defect or wound). Yet, it does not appear on this reconstruction. His skull looks more Caucasoid than Negroid.
7.) Contemporary hunter-gatherers in other parts of Europe had the derived alleles for SLC24A5 rs1426654 and SLC45A2 rs16891982. Some articles are making it seem that depigmentation only occured very recently.
8.) The politicization of this is ridiculous, both on the Right and the Left. The Left are using it as an excuse for more immigration, they are claiming that this man and his population are the true arcitects of Britain's culture (completely ignoring the Anglo-Saxon, Roman, and Celtic contributions), and some Black Africans are claiming they are indigenous to Britain, despite not being related to this man at all. Africans fall far away on a PCA from Prehistoric Europeans. The only relatives of Cheddar Man would be the White British population (apparently sharing 10% of their ancestry with him). On the Right, you have people vehemently denying science without even viewing the paper yet and making racial claims such as dark skin is less evolved since it was a precursor to light skin, which makes no sense to me.
@Samuel Andrews Thanks, I look forward to it. What's your YouTube channel?
ReplyDelete@When_In_Rome Excellent points you have made there. This man has no relation to Subsaharan Africans, yet many "Blacks" are now claiming to be the indigenous inhabitants of Britain. It makes absolutely no sense. This is the problem I have with these ridiculous terms "White" and "Black". Firstly, there's no such thing as "White" or "Black" peoples, as identities based on skin colour is stupidity. It's best to call such identities as what they are, i.e. Europeans/Europid Caucasoids and Negroids/Congoid/Capoid. I despise these terms because they add a lot of confusion. Now, you have a bunch of Subsaharan Africans thinking that they have a right to be in Britain. I think this fits into the Left's narrative that humans are only distinguished by skin colours well, and are otherwise 100% the same. This is what they have been claiming this whole time and the Cheddar Man drama fits into their narrative nicely.
@Philippe
ReplyDeleteThis map shows the spread of SLC24A5:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ala111Thr_allele_frequency_distribution0.png
This map shows the spread of SLC45A2:
https://anthropology.net/2008/10/09/slc45a2matp-the-genetics-of-human-hair-color/worldwide-distirbution-of-rs16891982-slc45a2-allele/
This map shows the spread of OCA2 (East Asian light skin):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OCA2_labels_S.png
Native Americans look like they lack these three.
So Cheddar man is most similar to Loschbour out of all ancient samples. If Davidski looks like Loschbour man according to the face morphology study from awhile back does that mean Davidski would look like a white Cheddar man? Davidski can you comment if you look like their model?
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting thing about this, it was included in some of the news articles that the other Mesolithic samples from the study were from a cannibalistic population not directly ancestral to Cheddar man, but from the data they've published it looks like all their Mesolithic samples are WHGs. WHGs = Cannibals?
ReplyDelete@Romulus
ReplyDeleteYes, I do look like Cheddar Man, just much taller and with blonde hair, and a totally different head and face. Here's a pic...
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VWj9SdG6EEU/Wop58RIiRKI/AAAAAAAAGcw/87reK8o-GBwUNkvy0aHFhxY-bG6KUqdlgCLcBGAs/s1600/Holland.jpg
Results from Wilde et al 2014:
ReplyDelete"Ancient DNA was retrieved from 63 out of 150 Eneolithic (ca. 6,500–5,000 y ago) and Bronze Age (ca. 5,000–4,000 y ago) samples from the Pontic–Caspian steppe, mainly from modern-day Ukraine. We used multiplex-PCR enrichment and next-generation sequencing to genotype the three pigmentation-associated SNPs (rs12913832, rs16891982, and rs1042602) and mtDNA hypervariable region 1 (HVR1) sequences plus 32 mtDNA coding region SNPs and a 9-bp-indel from these individuals (Tables S1 and S2). Consensus HVR1 sequences were successfully assembled from 60 individuals. Pigmentation gene data were obtained from 48 samples. We also genotyped the three pigmentation-associated SNPs in a sample of 60 modern Ukrainians (28) and observed an increase in frequency of all derived alleles between the ancient and modern samples from the same geographic region (Table 1 and Fig. S1). This implies that the pigmentation of the prehistoric population is likely to have differed from that of modern humans living in the same area. Modern frequencies of the derived alleles within all of Europe and outside of Europe are provided for comparison (Table 1)."
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/13/4832
He looks more Native American/ Asian than Sub-Saharan African. But of course phenotype in general is a poor indicator of actual genetic make-up.
ReplyDeleteFrom Brace et al.:
ReplyDelete"Loschbour from Luxembourg is ~2000 years younger than Cheddar Man, and is predicted to have had intermediate skin pigmentation. Furthermore, the Loschbour individual most likely had blue/green eyes. In contrast, La Braña18 from northern Spain who is slightly later than Loschbour is predicted to have had dark to dark to black skin and hazel/green eye colour."
"These results imply that quite different skin pigmentation levels coexisted in WHGs at least by around 6000 BC."
From the Supplementary material:
Prediction range (using missing alleles) for Cheddar Man's skin:
Very Pale 0
Pale 0
Intermediate 0.394 - 0.125
Dark 0 - 0
Dark-Black 0.606 - 0.875
"If we omit the three missing alleles, our tool produces 0.891 and 0.109 probabilities for the intermediate and dark-black category respectively, changing the prediction ranges to 0.891-0.125 and 0.109-0.875."
"The missing loci certainly impact on this prediction; however utilizing the input of all ancestral alleles is the preferred option over the use of the derived alleles at these loci – hence 0.394 for intermediate and 0.606 for Dark-black would be the most probable profile."
"It is unlikely that this individual has the darkest possible pigmentation, however it cannot be ruled out."
Gamba et al 2014:
ReplyDelete"Imputation permitted us to follow the temporal dynamics of genetic variants that are believed to have been under selection. Of two skin pigmentation loci known to have swept to fixation during European prehistory32,33, the light pigmentary variant of SLC24A5 is present from the earliest of our samples and is homozygous from the Middle Neolithic onwards, whereas the light pigmentary variant of SLC45A2 only appears towards the later half of our transect with the first homozygote genotype in the Copper Age (Fig. 3). Both SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 exhibited an ancestral homozygous state in Mesolithic specimens of Central5 and Western Europe7, while SLC24A5 had the derived state in a Central European Neolithic individual5. Our temporal transect suggests separate selective sweeps at these two pigmentary loci, acting over a millennium apart. The selected variant at a third pigmentary locus with a proposed adaptive history in Europe, TYRP1, also shows some tendency to higher prevalence in later samples. This temporal transition towards lighter pigmentation is also seen with hair where colours and shades estimated from SNPs used in the forensic Hirisplex system grade from black/dark brown in earlier samples to light brown and dark blonde in later individuals (Fig. 3)."
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6257
@Davidski hahaha it seems you have him beat, maybe Phillipe should darken up your pic and we can get some idea of what Lochsbour looked like.
ReplyDeleteGenetiker has a pretty good index of pigmentation of ancient samples:
ReplyDeletehttps://genetiker.wordpress.com/pigmentation/
interestingly AG2 had light skin
@Romulus Isn't Genetiker that crazy dude?
ReplyDeleteI suggest Roy King to delete that comment , unless he posted it after asking the authors .
ReplyDeleteChet,
About Indian aDNA there was a very recent press release , suggesting publication this month .
If there's a press release already out about the Rakhigarhi paper, then we could be looking at a double or triple whammy in Nature this week, with the Beaker, Rakhigarhi, and maybe the Southeast Europe papers all coming out in the same issue.
ReplyDeleteBut all I know almost for sure is that the Beaker paper will be out late on Wednesday.
Yes going to be fascinating .
ReplyDelete@Nirjhar007 Would you mind sharing it? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteBreaking News: http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/evidence-aryan-invasion-theory/
ReplyDelete@Davidski Is this legitimate or what?
I'd say there's a lot of stupidity on both the left and the right when it comes to this.
ReplyDeleteThe left's reaction isn't unexpected ofc, but many segments of the right likewise effectively reduce ancestral affinity down to skin tone. I.E. Many have no understanding of recombination.
Τhey prioritize skin tone above everything else as if that trivial trait alone says something of substance about any human group----Europeans or otherwise.
So, there was a lot of unnecessary triggering among the Alt-Righters and plenty have called the study a fraud. lol
Yet, when the ancient Egyptian study came out, they misunderstood the results and ran with them because it suited their agenda---or so they thought.
Yeah, a lot are just as bad as Afrocentrists, sadly.
At best, they have a cursory understanding of the rich European heritage they claim to be defending. Instead, they're reduced to obsessing about skin tone, quoting quack Jared Taylor's simplifications about IQ and needlessly appropriating history of others(or bashing it at other times).
Now, on a more pertinent note, I am unconvinced from the stats that British Neolithics were descendants of the Cardial Wave. Some of those significant stats could just be a result of pre-existing affinities of Iberian and British WHGs and more WHG in both groups relative to LBKs.
ReplyDeleteArchaeology doesn't seem to be clear on this, either.
@Kanishka
ReplyDeleteBreaking News: http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/evidence-aryan-invasion-theory/
Is this legitimate or what?
Looks like the usual garbage.
British Neolithics come from Chassen & Michelsberg
ReplyDelete@Davidski The guy was talking about this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5770440/
ReplyDeleteIt has nothing to do with the upcoming Rakhigarhi paper. He just said it was released in Nature recently, when in reality it was not released in Nature, but a completely different journal. I do not know what is going on here.
@Anthro Survey Good points. Both Leftists and the Alt-Right are very similar, despite it not seeming to be the case at first glance. I especially hate how the Alt-Right appropriates everyone's history, just like afrocentrists. I cannnot stand these sort of nuts.
ReplyDelete@Rob
ReplyDeleteSo, a mix of Cardial and Danubian elements. Chasseen-Lagozza-Cortaillod are Cardial-derived, afaik.
@Kanishka
Yeah, and I don't see the "strategic" point in appropriating anything. I mean, Euro Neolithic cultures were by no means lagging behind technologically---to the contrary. Pioneering copper workers, proto-urban sites in Tropolye(as well as in other places), Stonehenge, etc. The same applies to post-BB horizons, of course, with their exquisite metalwork.
@Anthro Survey, I think there should be enough structure in Global25 at least to distinguish between the two scenarios, of Atlantic / Cardial vs Danubian migration to the British Neolithic, regardless of HG admixture.
ReplyDeleteTo visualise, let's first use the trick of taking the Global_25 data for a subset of populations and then reprocessing through PAST3 to restructure the variance captured by Global_25 for those population in a more visually obvious way.
See here - https://imgur.com/0q41eh8 (Took Global25 data just for European Early Neolithic and HG, then ran this through PAST3 PCA).
You see that this reprocessing quickly forms a PCA (with very, very low share of the variance) that splits apart Atlantic farmers from a position between Hungarian / SE European and WHG.
Let's confirm this by simulating populations that are 85% Hungary farmer and 15% WHG in the Global25 data, and then reprocessing through PAST3 again. See here - https://i.imgur.com/DvG1DPN.png
Though the variance between the 85%Hungary+15% WHG and the real Atlantic farmers is very, very low, they do seem to be distinguishable, and the Ireland_MN farmer (Ballynahatty) are close to the Atlantic cluster, while Sweden and Germany farmers are intermediate.
(NJ cluster also shows some substructure, however this is waaay more influenced by the main dimensions: https://imgur.com/ziLYRPK).
There could be some overfitting issue here, but I am hopeful G25 has enough precision to distinguish these scenarios.
@Nirjhar and Davidsky It's good news. Even if we don't get the Indian papers, we will have the Bell Beaker paper by the weekend. I have a feeling the Bell Beaker paper will completely demolish Anthony's Hungarian Basin - CW theory.
ReplyDeleteI wish we could get more samples from Sredny Stog and West Yamna though
ReplyDeleteI'm loving the shirts, David. Will mos def support you geeks.
ReplyDeleteIf you DNAgeeks are up for it, I'd love to order "Mr. T" shirts for my Y-hg T1a dad, bro, and toddler nephew too:
ReplyDeletehttps://cdn.dribbble.com/users/1342826/screenshots/3035779/mrt_dribbble_copy_1x.png
@ Chetan
ReplyDeleteOr maybe Anthony got an inside scoop on the data ?
@Anthro Survey Good point. Another thing is that I've even seen these sorts of people, both Alt-Righters and Afrocentrists, appropriate purely West Asian cultures like the BMAC, Indus Valley Civilization, Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, etc. They are truly an idiotic bunch.
ReplyDelete@Kanishka
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is that I've even seen these sorts of people, both Alt-Righters and Afrocentrists, appropriate purely West Asian cultures like the BMAC, Indus Valley Civilization, Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, etc. They are truly an idiotic bunch.
I do not think the Indus Valley Civilization had a West Asian type genetics, but the other ones surely did. The IVC was probably West Asian-ASI mix in genetic composition.
Anthro:
ReplyDelete"I'd say there's a lot of stupidity on both the left and the right when it comes to this."
You know I respect you despite your "center right" leanings, Anthro. I'm reading the Guardian article about Cheddar Man, and see not a word concerning recent immigration. I doubt that Guardian is the right's cup of tea. Ditto New York Times article.
Pray point me to these "stupid leftists" who are doing anything of the sort claimed by the paranoid right wing commenters before you.
Even in the U.S., the "left" has zero power to make any fuss about immigration, despite the universally accepted fact of fairly recent immigration by all-but-natives to this country. Same with South Africa and Australia. Is the British "left" somehow so powerful that they can make the smallest dent in immigration politics based on the probable skin color of a native Brit thousands of years ago?
Forget immigration to Britain. I just cannot wait until Brexit happens full force -- sorry to the good Brits who will also suffer, but sometimes a collective lesson must be learned.
@David
ReplyDelete"Yes, I do look like Cheddar Man, just much taller and with blonde hair, and a totally different head and face. Here's a pic..."
How old is that picture?
@Onur Well said, I agree.
ReplyDeleteThat’s Owen Wilson before he broke his nose
ReplyDelete@MomOfZoha True, but the main point here is that this man was not Black, but now everyone thinks he was probably a Subsaharan African or a South Asian. Here was one of those recent cringey articles which resulted from this discovery: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/cheddar-man-brown-briton-national-identity-white-skin.
ReplyDeleteIronically, as Razib put it, the modern they fair Britons are actually closer genetically to modern South Asians than this guy was.
Here: https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/02/15/white-modern-northern-europeans-are-genetically-more-like-brown-south-asians-than-brownish-ancient-northern-europeans-were/
@MomofZoha, that isn't very kind.
ReplyDelete@Kanishka:
ReplyDelete"@MomOfZoha True, but the main point here is that this man was not Black, but now everyone thinks he was probably a Subsaharan African or a South Asian. Here was one of those recent cringey articles which resulted from this discovery: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/cheddar-man-brown-briton-national-identity-white-skin."
Nobody thinks that Cheddar Man was Subsaharan African or South Asian. That is not at all stated by the so-called "cringey" article you linked either. The author of your linked article, himself a biologist apparently, simply stated that he finally felt "more comfortable in his own skin". That refers to skin color. Skin color: The very obsession of several right-wing posters in this very comment thread.
If you look at the "Mesolithic genome from Spain" thread on the "Popular Posts" side bar, you will note the identical pattern: A huge number of not-at-all-left posters completely obsessed with the skin color of the Iberian Mesolithic Hunter Gatherer. Even an algorithm could have picked up the pattern: The very same posters who pre-emptively try to criticize "the left" for something imaginary, themselves are the ones who proceed to delve particularly into the skin color of these ancient Europeans, clearly trying to find any possible clue that might make the ancients lighter-skinned. There is even a discussion of how "scary" the blue-eyes-black-skin combination is in that thread.
Given such a mental climate, it is no surprise that a dark skinned person feels some sense of relief by such discoveries. Don't worry, there is no chance of political effect. It's just psychological...
Any comments on the mtDNA list? B4a for neolithics? Nah.
ReplyDeleteBut the B5/H13/HV is interesting if it was HV.
@MomOfZoha
ReplyDeleteThe mental climate on universities isn't the one you describe. It is diametrically the opposite of it.
@Rob Just maybe but I wouldn't count on it.
ReplyDelete@MomofZoha
ReplyDeleteOh wow. Pot, meet kettle.
Eh, come on. That Guardian article certainly includes a paraphrase that 'Cheddar Man disproves that a "prerequisite for our (British) national identity was white skin"' so is pretty obviously expressing the idea that this research supports a particular ideology about the national identity (though obviously, since it's the Guardian more in a "preaching to the choir" way).
ReplyDeleteUltimately, exploiting this stuff as political football, it can only (at least weakly) harm people's trust in science as a politically neutral, purely empirically grounded attempt to understand reality, and reduce their willingness to fund science publicly. Particularly if it ultimately proves to be wrong, inaccurate or incomplete. The response to La Brana man was I think far more proportionate and balanced. Perhaps it may well mean nothing in the long term. But that's enough about that, no value saying anything more.
All this "black" propaganda is getting out of hands already by the media. Get this into your heads: Genetically he has absolutely nothing to do with black africans, he was a Western Hunter-Gatherer, that is , an indigenous european and he clusters with the other WHG's (Loschbour, La Brana), etc.
ReplyDeleteBtw, Taino ancient dna - https://phys.org/news/2018-02-indigenous-taino-present-day-caribbean-populations.html
ReplyDeleteSounds pretty cool news, suggests that ancestry related to Taino people still persists in Puerto Rico living people (rather than their ancestry coming from some other Native American group).
@MomOfZoha I don't really think this is about skin colour, as much as it is about twisting the reality for the public. One thing is certain, and that is that this guy was not anything other than a European and clusters closest to modern Europeans.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Alt-Right and their ilk obsess over skin colour. They just equate skin colour with racial types, and think that anyone with fair skin was White, and anyone with brown or black skin was non-White. They are very narrow-minded people and should not at all be taken seriously. Especially considering that these are the people who thought the Ancient Egyptians were pure blooded Europeans. I think it is best to ignore these types of fools.
@Kanishka
ReplyDelete"He also does not resemble Prince"
The cheddar man thing is the media being their usual PC self. I think he looks like James McEvoy.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/JamesMcAvoyTIFFSept10.jpg/170px-JamesMcAvoyTIFFSept10.jpg
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/720x405/p05xbsb2.jpg
@Matt Whiteness is a stupid social construct and it ends up hurting European nationalists in the end instead of helping their cause.
ReplyDelete@truth Of course it is.
@Grey Excellent point. The media loves placing Africans into historical eras in which they do not belong. I heard that the upcoming series on ancient Greece mythology has a African Achilles, African Zeus, etc. I cannot believe this nonsensical BS from these losers. At the same time, they get offended when a European actor plays an African role, even if the said role is that of a North African or Egyptian. IMO, ancient North Africans probably resembled modern Europeans more than they do modern North Africans (though, genetically they would've been closer to Near Easterners). This is because modern North Africans recently picked up an additional 20 to 25% Subsaharan African, and some minor Arab and Levantine ancestry as well.
ReplyDeleteWhen_In_Rome
ReplyDelete"On the Right, you have people vehemently denying science without even viewing the paper yet and making racial claims such as dark skin is less evolved since it was a precursor to light skin, which makes no sense to me."
That's partly trolling - explaining why the media narrative is wrong takes longer than most people have the patience for but the media narrative itself - very dark skin very recently -implies massive natural selection for lighter skin and if you point that out to PC types their reaction is funny.
@Kanishka
ReplyDeleteif i had to guess i'd guess cheddar man looked more like a Berber than anything else but time will tell
@Grey No, the Alt-Right dismisses every study that does not suit their narrative. They only accept studies which fit into their narrative. They are not trolling anyone is what I am saying.
ReplyDeleteOn average lot of these hate groups(regardless of which ethnic group they claim to be superior) are quite low IQ individuals who are looking to acquire status/feel important. I find the whole cheddar man being black, quite hilarious. Its quite stupid to go by skin color and claim If you don't have the white skin color gene (SLC) you are african. Cheddar man looks like a Welsh individual. I do agree people should use the term European instead of white.
ReplyDelete@Matt:
ReplyDelete"Eh, come on. That Guardian article certainly includes a paraphrase that 'Cheddar Man disproves that a "prerequisite for our (British) national identity was white skin"' so is pretty obviously expressing the idea that this research supports a particular ideology about the national identity (though obviously, since it's the Guardian more in a "preaching to the choir" way)."
I don't live in Great Britain, so am not aware of the sense of national hype going on there. My academic area is also not biology, genetics, anthro, archaeology, etc., so did not directly feel another kind of academic hype -- then again, I'm sure the difference is ultimately geographic.
What I did read is the original Guardian article (before the linked editorial) and the NYT article. The editorial linked by Kanishka is clearly a personal account, with a dash of personal references, such as the author's personal feeling of relief. Given the personal aspect of that article, it is more surprising that the author did not say anything further on his own experience as a south Asian Brit.
At any rate, I always make a mistake of responding to this kind of crap on these threads. There are folks upthread who say shit like "now the left is gonna use this to support immigration from Africa", which was the origin of my first response. If you honestly think that there is sanity in that kind of sentiment, as well as anything appropriate about talking about light-eyed-blacks as "aliens" in the La Brana thread (huge discussion there about that), then of course there is nothing further to say.
@Kanishka
ReplyDeleteWell, this is what you're saying but that's not what happens. These papers are very recent and they're starting to get popular. The people are learning, just give them time.
Also, you seem an adept of the horseshoe theory. Please, do yourself a favour and learn history. Tactics and Ideologies aren't tied to one another, the Left and the Right can use the same Tactics (non-subjective psychological warfare) to push completely different goals and agendas.
I myself am helping in the spreading of the new ancient genomics, so I can say for certain that this is slowly becoming better understood in the "Alt-Right" (the "Alt-Right" doesn't exist as well, this is just an Umbrella Term the media uses for a vast loose coalition of peoples and ideas. For instance, Razib Khan would be classified as "Alt-Right" even if he explicitly denies).
@namedguest I know that the Alt-Right, "Black" Rights Matter, and Leftists have different agendas. I never said anything which suggested the contrary. Also, it's not just the media who calls this group the Alt-Right. They themselves say that they belong to the Alt-Right.
ReplyDeleteHere: https://altright.com/2017/01/21/rumi-was-white/
It's currently being rebooted, but WTF?! Rumi was White? Really... This is total BS, and these people are no better than those idiots at EgyptSearch.
@everyone Political debates aside, this upcoming week should be interesting for South Asian genetics. Already, Indian nationalist news outlets have gone into panic mode and come out with these articles:
ReplyDelete1) https://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/letters/2018/02/15/debating-the-facts-of-history/
2) http://www.indiawest.com/letters_to_editor/history-textbooks-and-aryan-invasion-theory/article_e5c003ba-1371-11e8-b988-8f21dfd63dbd.html
3) https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/what-kind-of-cheese-were-our-ancestors/articleshow/62953074.cms?from=mdr
4) http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/evidence-aryan-invasion-theory/ (I've posted this before)
I wonder what's going on here...
thanks Matt, I was also wondering if it was just the WHG pulling them toward Cardial Neolithic.
ReplyDeleteDamn, I'm disappointed in you all. You managed to get roped back in by Kanishka/Shah/cheerleader.
ReplyDeleteCheerleader, you are pretty skilled in turning every thread into some racial/political bullshit. I'll give you that atleast.
Total agreement about Kanishka. I haven't been posting much because of the slow progress in the field recently. But anyone who posts "Now, you have a bunch of Subsaharan Africans thinking that they have a right to be in Britain." should probably be banned from commenting immediately. I've seen how this goes hundreds of times.
ReplyDeleteThere is zero reason that a person with Sub-Saharan ancestry would not have a right to live in the UK, based only on that fact. This kind of talk gives respectable sites like this a bad image, and will hurt advertising revenue and sales of products by associated sites.
north africans are not similar to europeans. they are closer to levantine farmers. I am egyptian and i look more like a lebanese and my african admixture is only 3%.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell is going on here? This place is inching towards Stormfront. It was bad enough putting up with Gioello's Antisemitic horseshit, and now, there's about four or five flat out racist assholes.
ReplyDeleteI've got news for you dimwits. No one chose their skin color or place of origin. How some of you go off on some African /left tangent is beyond logic. Who cares if some WHG were darker skinned? Are you all that threatened by having a dark ancestor? News flash.. modern European white skin is recent. We've known that for some time. No where does the author or people involved call him African. So why are you all getting your panties in a bunch and getting triggered. Hell, go back another 15000 years and our ancestors are darker than Cheddar Man. Will your heads explode thinking about that?
As for immigration, perhaps you all forget your own past. No one is pure anything. None of us would be here. And that culture is baggage from a bygone era. You didn't create it. You were just born into it. You expect everyone to be like you and forget who they are? How thoughtful and considerate. All of your cultures were made by immigrant wave on immigrant wave.
If you do not like third-world immigrants looking for a better life showing up in your country, perhaps you should stop voting for politicians that have no problem waging wars there, taking resources from those countries, and keeping ruthless dictators in charge.
Talk to people that look different from you and come from other countries. You might actually find out you have a lot in common, make new friends, and stop acting like such a prick.
@Chad
ReplyDeleteI agree, I have noticed that some of the recent commentators have been pushing some racist ideologies. I agree with your statement there is no pure of anything. Commentators who are making racist comments should be banned as this blog is mostly seen as a scientific blog. There is nothing constant in this planet or this universe and people are constantly moving around in this planet.
Alright, I'm closing this thread.
ReplyDelete