It goes both ways: years ago in Italy, I had a housemate from Sicily. She had blond eyes and blue hair.
DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
41–50 of 97 posts
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using a PCA to prove an intrinsic point about ethnicity is as laughable as it gets. You're aware the vectors in a PCA are just linear combinations of the observed features, right? You're just staring at the same data a different way. But of course I didn't expect any less from someone who quotes Slate Star Codex of all sources to prove a point.
> Using a PCA to prove an intrinsic point A what point? > You're aware the vectors in a PCA are just linear combinations of the observed features, right? Yes, I am. Do you have a reason to think that means PCA is bad at representing similarity and kinship because of this? As for the Slate Star Codex source - that wasn't to prove anything, just to define the "weak man" term. I would have used "straw man", but then you…
>A what point?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic
>Do you have a reason to think that means PCA is bad at representing similarity and kinship because of this?
I suggest you read up on the definition of "distance" and "similarity" before drinking the PCA kool-aid. You don't get to define an ad hoc distance just because it fits your ideas about ethnicity. But then, I only have the popgen community to back me up on this. What do you have?
>As for the Slate Star Codex source - that wasn't to prove anything, just to define the "weak man" term.
SSC, providing ammunition to online HBD proponents since 2013.
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#43It goes both ways: years ago in Italy, I had a housemate from Sicily. She had blond eyes and blue hair.
That is unusual :)
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that it's hard to believe, it's just that it's not supported by the science. Geneticists simply said that they had the genes for blue eyes while the European genes associated with fair skin were not present. What wasn't said was that they were black – that was something the media simply made up because it fit with their agenda. It seems fair to assume they were darker than modern Northern Europeans, but simi…
> but similarly it seems quite a stretch to assume that they were as dark as African peoples. “African peoples” have a pretty broad range of pigmentation, and “black” isn’t used exclusively for African people, anyhow; e.g., indigenous Australians. It's funny how White people use “black” with almost unlimited breadth right up until that challenges the original whiteness of territory they view as an ancestral homeland,…
Fascinating that you singled out white people. The original poster could have any ethnic heritage, but you went with white. Why is that? It may be a good idea to interrogate your biases.
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that it's hard to believe, it's just that it's not supported by the science. Geneticists simply said that they had the genes for blue eyes while the European genes associated with fair skin were not present. What wasn't said was that they were black – that was something the media simply made up because it fit with their agenda. It seems fair to assume they were darker than modern Northern Europeans, but simi…
That's why I put "black" in quotation marks, as it covers a whole range of skin tones that exist mostly in the eye of the beholder. The reconstructions or artistic depictions of those early Britons doesn't make me think Africa as much as it makes me think exposure to the sun by a non-fair-skinned population. I am from very Northern European stock and I get very dark with consistent exposure to the sun despite my exte…
i have bad news: the postman in your area was an italian 'guest worker' back in the day
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#46So... this isn’t news at all, but rather can be seen as supporting what our (norwegian here) own older tales and historians wrote down around the time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimskringla It’s well known we went around, even likely as far as asia (buddha statuettes were found in viking graves) and one of our kings (Harald Hårråde) was commander of the Byzantine royal Guard ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…
The Russian Vikings (i.e. the Vikings who in the 9th century founded the original Russian state - Kievan Rus and accompanying dukedoms around - and ruled it for several centuries after that) were raiding as far as Caspian Sea and Iran and bringing the trophies - goods and slaves - for sale back as far as Scandinavia. So there were a lot of cross-continental blood/DNA mixing during those centuries (9th-12th) until Mongols came and that started another chapter.
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so hard to believe about a largely "black" (with blue eyes) population being displaced/integrated with by subsequent migrations? That scenario is supported by the myths of those islands and human migrations are the story of humanity and human cultural developments. If you want to argue with the science or point out deficiencies you're encouraged to. That's the beauty of science.
It's not that it's hard to believe, it's just that it's not supported by the science. Geneticists simply said that they had the genes for blue eyes while the European genes associated with fair skin were not present. What wasn't said was that they were black – that was something the media simply made up because it fit with their agenda. It seems fair to assume they were darker than modern Northern Europeans, but simi…
It sounds like your problem is with sensationalized science journalism, not science itself. In which case, yeah, we all agree with you.
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but similarly it seems quite a stretch to assume that they were as dark as African peoples. “African peoples” have a pretty broad range of pigmentation, and “black” isn’t used exclusively for African people, anyhow; e.g., indigenous Australians. It's funny how White people use “black” with almost unlimited breadth right up until that challenges the original whiteness of territory they view as an ancestral homeland,…
Fascinating that you singled out white people. The original poster could have any ethnic heritage, but you went with white. Why is that? It may be a good idea to interrogate your biases.
> Fascinating that you singled out white people. The original poster could have any ethnic heritage, but you went with white.
I wasn't commenting about the original poster but about the broad community that have been making this exact argument about this exact issue since it entered the public debate, and a wide number of other issues for, well, almost the entire time that population studies that would support this kind of discussion of the past have existed.
(And, yes, you can see identical behavior referencing different identity divides besides white and non-white in the same period over the same broad class of past-population issues, but this specific issue of darker-skinned past inhabitants of the British Isles is one of the focuses of whites and the flexible nature of the label “black”.)
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Using a PCA to prove an intrinsic point A what point? > You're aware the vectors in a PCA are just linear combinations of the observed features, right? Yes, I am. Do you have a reason to think that means PCA is bad at representing similarity and kinship because of this? As for the Slate Star Codex source - that wasn't to prove anything, just to define the "weak man" term. I would have used "straw man", but then you…
>A what point? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic >Do you have a reason to think that means PCA is bad at representing similarity and kinship because of this? I suggest you read up on the definition of "distance" and "similarity" before drinking the PCA kool-aid. You don't get to define an ad hoc distance just because it fits your ideas about ethnicity. But then, I only have the popgen community to…
There's nothing ad hoc about it - PCA is an extremely fundamental statistical tool, and commonly used in genetics, especially to evaluate population structure. A few random examples:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392282/
https://speciationgenomics.github.io/pca/
https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...
https://www.genetics.org/content/210/2/719
https://www.nature.com/articles/ng0508-491
If that SSC reference bothers you so much, you can look at the Atlantic for a definition of weak man instead: https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/07/the-w...
And I know what intrinsic means, but I don't know what an "intrinsic point" is supposed to be, or what makes my point "intrinsic", as opposed to just a regular point.
Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian
#50I already lost my faith in the cultural "western" elites. I hate to sound like a hardcore conservative (I am pretty leftist) but I dont see there is coming back from the current environment. 2+2 = 5, original English people were actually black, more diversity has been proved to generate better stock performance of the company.From the flimsiest of evidence a whole new narrative is created, one that match the social i…
> “I already lost my faith in the cultural "western" elites. I hate to sound like a hardcore conservative...” Really? This is hardly dog vivisection by the Royal Society. If it’s bad science and can be shown to be inconsistent, why ‘lose faith’? That’s what science is about.
Ah, the good old "no true scotsman" argument.
You can lose faith in a particular part of the scientific community without losing faith in the scientific method.