Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

news.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 68 posts

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#41

Post by danans »

mirimir wrote: post #40
danans wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, it's my impression that some Jewish groups have done a pretty good job at maintaining racial purity. Because certain very specific subgroups have done this doesn't mean that they are "pure". These in-marrying groups are always descended from mixed populations in the first place, populations that predate the identity badges we ascribe to them today. Tay Sachs, among the genetic diseases you alluded to, is…

> People can convert to Judaism, and even be born into Judaism with one Jewish parent. This is very common among populations outside of Israel. Yes, but to strict orthodox, they're not really "Jewish". At one point, I researched rabbinical criteria for determining pedigree and classifying degree of Jewishness. Who can marry who, and how any children are classified. It's mind-boggling. If I have some time while this t…

> Yes, but to strict orthodox, they're not really "Jewish".

Unless you are seeking to identify as "strict orthodox", why would it matter?

The majority of Jewish groups are welcoming to people from the outside, if they achieve the required objectives in terms of religious and cultural fluency.

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#43

Post by mirimir »

danans wrote: post #41
mirimir wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People can convert to Judaism, and even be born into Judaism with one Jewish parent. This is very common among populations outside of Israel. Yes, but to strict orthodox, they're not really "Jewish". At one point, I researched rabbinical criteria for determining pedigree and classifying degree of Jewishness. Who can marry who, and how any children are classified. It's mind-boggling. If I have some time while this t…

> Yes, but to strict orthodox, they're not really "Jewish". Unless you are seeking to identify as "strict orthodox", why would it matter? The majority of Jewish groups are welcoming to people from the outside, if they achieve the required objectives in terms of religious and cultural fluency.

I don't really care, now.

But strict orthodox rules do apply in Israel. And that's not so insignificant. It's one reason why I'm in the US and not in Israel.

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#44

Post by dqpb »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #11
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #7

> The Steppe migration resulted in a 90 percent replacement of the population. >While only 40 percent of the population about 6,000 years ago comes from the Steppes, 100 percent of the Y chromosomes do. From reading this article it seems another way that this could be phrased, is that we are all the descendants of perpetrators of genocide.

Don't forget the rape! 100% of your Ys coming from one place is the opposite of "mutt", too. But the only way you can get to do race science is by coming to the conclusion "There's no such thing as race" first, and making the details sound boring enough that nobody asks.

The concept of race has always sounded like total bullshit to me. Do you have a definition that makes any sense?

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#45

Post by danans »

ng12 wrote: post #32
danans wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rebuke of the false trope of the purity of racial ancestry which has persisted in many human societies for centuries, occasionally manifesting in the form of events like the Holocaust. Because that trope has sadly persisted to this day in some quarters, it's falsehood needs to be continually exposed, especially by sciences such as biological anthropology, which were once used to promulgate it.

I don't think it's a rebuke at all. The other side of the coin is to make sure you're the steppe tribes, not the hunter-gatherers. People who care about such things don't really care about purity, they care about winners and losers.

> The other side of the coin is to make sure you're the steppe tribes, not the hunter-gatherers.

This doesn't follow from the researcher's statement at all. Just because the mechanism by which diversity happened thousands of years ago was often terrible doesn't mean we need to project that upon today, when we have much better mechanisms for genetic diversity, like immigration.

We, as a human society, have improved just a bit.

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#46

Post by astazangasta »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #4

> A similar prehistory occurred in the Iberian Peninsula where a third population, also arrived from the Steppes, joined the hunter-gather and farmer groups. In this case, DNA research shows that the third population was exclusively male: While only 40 percent of the population about 6,000 years ago comes from the Steppes, 100 percent of the Y chromosomes do. This doesn't say what the author wants it to say. If 100%…

No, it doesn't mean that either (extermination of males). It just means that only Steppe Y-chromosomes survived. This could be the result of extermination, or it could be the result of stochastic drift, or selection, or any number of other scenarios that result in the loss of some set of Y chromosomes.

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#47

Post by jcoffland »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #4

> A similar prehistory occurred in the Iberian Peninsula where a third population, also arrived from the Steppes, joined the hunter-gather and farmer groups. In this case, DNA research shows that the third population was exclusively male: While only 40 percent of the population about 6,000 years ago comes from the Steppes, 100 percent of the Y chromosomes do. This doesn't say what the author wants it to say. If 100%…

> This doesn't say what the author wants it to say.

The way I read it, the author was perfectly aware of this interpretation.

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#48

Post by danans »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #39
danans wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, "previously thought to have developed under colonial rule" is just false. The ancient Greeks wrote about India's caste system, thousands of years ago. Correct, the article is flat wrong on this. Indian sources that even predate the Greeks also speak in detail about the societal arrangement. > Second, what the data shows is not a record of social structure. It shows that modern Indian castes have practiced en…

> Yes, but they are still sampled, albeit in varying proportions, from the same source populations, referred to in the literature as ASI and ANI. Sure, but that was several thousand years ago. Again, most people are perfectly happy to describe unmixed ancestry for the last 2400 years as being "pure", and the castes go back farther than that.

> Again, most people are perfectly happy to describe unmixed ancestry for the last 2400 years as being "pure", and the castes go back farther than that.

Just because "most people" are willing to draw that line at 2400 years doesn't make it a valid argument.

At most you could say that there is genetic evidence to support the hypothesis that the castes have practiced endogamy for a long time, evidenced by their characteristic genetic admixtures from their shared source populations, and that the caste hierarchy is roughly correlated with ANI admixture rate. That doesn't equate to the word "pure" at all.

People are willing to make all sorts of claims about their and others' identities to suit their personal agendas, and it's their right to do so, but they aren't doing science.

What about the many millennia that elapsed between the last major shared human population bottleneck and 2400 years ago?

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#49

Post by thaumasiotes »

astazangasta wrote: post #46
thaumasiotes wrote: post #4

> A similar prehistory occurred in the Iberian Peninsula where a third population, also arrived from the Steppes, joined the hunter-gather and farmer groups. In this case, DNA research shows that the third population was exclusively male: While only 40 percent of the population about 6,000 years ago comes from the Steppes, 100 percent of the Y chromosomes do. This doesn't say what the author wants it to say. If 100%…

No, it doesn't mean that either (extermination of males). It just means that only Steppe Y-chromosomes survived. This could be the result of extermination, or it could be the result of stochastic drift, or selection, or any number of other scenarios that result in the loss of some set of Y chromosomes.

Realistically, extermination of males is exactly what it means. It cannot be stochastic drift; the pool of chromosomes dying out is too large. It can be selection (it is selection), but it can only be the kind of selection that involves every native male failing to have children at all, because the Y chromosome does not recombine.

Re: DNA reveals we are all genetic mutts

#50

Post by known »

deogeo wrote: post #12

> “No population is, or ever could be, pure,” Why this obsession with 'purity'? Isn't it obvious that, despite none being pure, some populations are more closely related?

Indian caste system is 2700 years old as per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Indian_history
Post reply on HN