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DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

joh.cam.ac.uk

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Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#61

Post by wisty »

esperent wrote: post #56
wisty wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities exist to teach teenagers basic literacy skills, and maybe a few technical skills in the STEM degrees. They're mostly just high-school English teachers with a few more qualifications and better writing skills and more dedication (which what it really takes to get the qualifications). When have they been worth putting any faith in? Back when they were all theology schools? Back when the elite academic esta…

I'm honestly insulted on behalf of all my friends who studied engineering and medicine and worked 40 hours a week for 4 to 7 years to get their degrees - many of whom (including myself) were adults when they started studying. Not to mention the many hard working researchers I've met, dedicating their entire lives to furthering human knowledge for way less money than they'd make in the corporate world. And here's some…

> I'm honestly insulted

Sorry you feel that way.

> "a few technical skills for teenagers"

Oh OK, yes STEM (for the most part) is pretty good. Now there are valid criticisms of the way it is done (much of the best criticism coming from within STEM schools) but nothing is perfect.

> Yes, there are some soft degrees out there

More than a few (https://educationdata.org/number-of-college-graduates/), and if you break it down by course I think you'll find that a lot of the most common courses are also pretty soft.

To be clear, I'm not complaining about the technical courses (some of which can be very good), almost every sane person trusts scientists on questions about science. It's that once you step outside the stuff that makes clear, empirical predictions a lot of it is pretty soft and always has been (since fields which don't make predictions are never wrong so they never really learn anything).

Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#62

Post by danans »

dzvYJk7Bjx wrote: post #52
dragonwriter wrote: post #34

Earlier 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,…

Would you say the same if someone questioned the original race of Sub Saharan Africans in distant history? If someone argued some were originally not Black and so therefore the ancestral homelands of Afro-Black people are in question, would you say the same thing or is race only a social construct when trying to define the white race? That is certainly the way the logic seems to be but I think that cuts two ways. If…

> Would you say the same if someone questioned the original race of Sub Saharan Africans in distant history?

Nobody is questioning the ancestral homeland of anyone. Just because some Scandanavians were dark skinned or had ancestors from outside Scandanavia - maybe even somewhere where people were mostly dark skinned - doesn't mean they weren't Scandanavian, unless you choose to believe that "Scandanavia" is a racial and not a geographic term.

At some point in relatively recent history some European ethno-nationalists developed this concept of a "racial homeland" and unfortunately to this day that way of thinking holds appeal among some groups.

All humans ultimately descend from hominids from more equatorial regions, and on the scale of hominid history we've only very recently left those regions.

> If race is a social construct then there isn't a Black nation, Black peoples, or anything ancestral to anyone who identifies as Black.

It's exactly the opposite, black identity exists precisely because race is a social construct, and furthermore is a powerful construct that has dictated the fates of untold millions throughout history.

Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#63

Post by danans »

kypro wrote: post #29
wavefunction wrote: post #24

Earlier 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…

> What wasn't said was that they were black

> it seems quite a stretch to assume that they were as dark as African peoples.

Africans also aren't the color black. Nobody said the first Britons were SubSaharan African at all. They just said they had dark skin.

This is bolstered by the discovery that a widespread gene - SLC24A5 - associated with fairer skin is a recent (8k years ago) phenomenon in Europe associated with the arrival of middle eastern farmers, in whom it developed due to their Vitamin-D poor cereal-based diet [1].

The same gene is present across Eurasia through to South Asia, and is partially responsible for pigmentation variation there also, even moreso than in Europe, where the gene is almost ubiquitous today. [2]

Of course it's not the only gene that controls depigmentation. Depigmentation in East Asia is not related to that gene at all - though it could be similarly influenced by cereal-based diets.

1. https://www.livescience.com/42838-european-hunter-gatherer-g...

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3820762/

Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#64

Post by atomi »

asveikau wrote: post #51
cambalache wrote: post #19

I 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'm not an expert in history, but it doesn't take much reading to understand that our current national, ethnic, and racial identities are all much more recent than popularly believed, and will likely be in flux again in the future of human history. I do not think that is "2+2 = 5" thinking, that seems to just be what happens over time. I had a few head-scratching moments of realization of this when I was into learnin…

On a related note: Celts descended from Spanish fishermen, study finds

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/celts-des...

Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#66

Post by throwaway894345 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #34
kypro wrote: post #29

Earlier 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,…

> 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, and then immediately start demanding that the blackness be viewed maximally narrowly.

That’s a pretty impressive generalization. It’s also not very charitable to imply that people are being defensive about some sort of racial homeland instead of taking them at their word that they are skeptical of the wild conclusions that aren’t supported by the science.

Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#67

Post by asveikau »

atomi wrote: post #64
asveikau wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert in history, but it doesn't take much reading to understand that our current national, ethnic, and racial identities are all much more recent than popularly believed, and will likely be in flux again in the future of human history. I do not think that is "2+2 = 5" thinking, that seems to just be what happens over time. I had a few head-scratching moments of realization of this when I was into learnin…

On a related note: Celts descended from Spanish fishermen, study finds https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/celts-des...

There is also Celtic history in what is now Spain, France, Italy... They were some of the peoples I was describing being assimilated into Rome. The current Spanish community of Galicia (the bit of Spain just above Portugal) has its name derived from Romans describing Celts living there. The "-gal" part of the name Portugal also derives from a reference to Celts.

Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#68

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

xtiansimon wrote: post #36
cambalache wrote: post #19

I 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.

“ You cannot reason a man out of what he never reasoned himself into.” Attributed to Jonathan Swift

The issue is that these elites did not come to their conclusion through science. They came to their conclusion because they are trying to push a certain narrative. Thus, no matter what data you show them, they will always find a way to cling to their narrative. Even worse, you might get cancelled for promulgating data and interpretations that does not fit the narrative.

This is not science!

Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#69

Post by goto11 »

The results are interesting but the article muddles the issue by confusing terminology.

At the time, "Viking" did not denote certain people or ethnic groups, it denoted an activity - traveling (and raiding) by boat. So a person might be described as "in viking" for the summer.

Only later have the people who did this activity been called "vikings". So nobody "self identified" as viking at the time.

The article muddles this by talking about "ethnic vikings" whatever that means, and "viking ancestry". Probably "Scandinavian" is meant. But the article at one hand talks about "Viking DNA" and at the same time claims vikings are not an ethnic group.

Edit: This criticism applies to the article, not the underlying paper which seem to be much more careful with terminology. It defines a "viking culture" existing outside of Scandinavia (e.g. in Scotland) with Scandinavian cultural links but where members of this culture were not necessarily of Scandinavian descent. It also examines remains of an ill-fated raiding party in Estonia which were Swedish vikings in the traditional definition. And then it examines DNA from viking-age burial sites inside Scandinavia.

Re: DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian

#70

Post by interfixus »

hrafn wrote: post #12

As usual, the university's public relations summary of the paper does not match the claims the paper makes. It makes grandiose claims of debunkings and is written from the point of view of whatever societal issue is popular today (identity and population movement). Link to preprint: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334525855_Populatio... I'm not seeing any claims there that are new. It is cool to have more da…

Project leader professor Eske Willerslev is - as far as I can ascertain - a highly competent and accomplished scientist, but with pattern of political leanings informing his scientific output and media appearances, of which there have been not a few over the years, at least in his native Denmark.

From reports of this paper I have so far read, it doesn't really - despite claims - challenge what we know of the vikings, their comings and goings, and their genetic makeup. Their iron age ancestors were a mixed bunch a thousand years earlier, and those we call vikings had been out and about for centuries all over Europe. Educated common knowledge is well aware that they probably har a variety of looks much like modern Scandinavians.

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