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Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

nature.com

141–150 of 231 posts

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#141
post #33

It's an emotionally charged subject, which is unfortunate as it's objectively fascinating from a purely historical perspective. The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA, lived peacefully and in harmony with the land right up until Europeans arrived. There's some debate about the megafauna extinctions, but no conclusive evidence either way. (I did app…

> The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA,

Isn't the fascinating question "How did they arrive" ?

My understanding is that timeline vastly pre-dates any kind of ship to make that voyage.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#142
post #116
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As we gather more data our understanding of human migration inevitably clashes with identity politics/nationalism and previous simplistic pre-scientific classifications based on skin color and facial features Does it? Because most studies find that people living in the same country are indeed more closely related to each other than to people of different countries, roughly according to what you would expect from ge…

Your first graph is surprising. In general, people from across Africa have the greatest genetic diversity. Mostly thanks to founder effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect from what I heard. But your first graph shows all of their African samples clustered relatively tightly together.

That's because the x-axis is "pairwise allele-sharing distance" ie: we munged the data every which way to find something that we could use k-means clustering to write a paper.

A better graph would be a "pairwise interracial-fucking distance" with the y axis the percentage of healthy babies born. That would be just one cluster.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never claimed such a thing. What a ridiculous takeaway.

>He's talking about the fact that Aboriginals, not unlike Native Americans... They presumably asked for a source for both claims, your only provided one says you lived among them. Either you grew up among both populations or have provided no source for one of your claims.

You presumed wrong.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#144
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's talking about the fact that Aboriginals, not unlike Native Americans, reject any attempt to explain their origin via science as they stick to the story of their origin that comes from their religion, and see the science based origin as disrespectful.

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#145
post #141
post #33

It's an emotionally charged subject, which is unfortunate as it's objectively fascinating from a purely historical perspective. The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA, lived peacefully and in harmony with the land right up until Europeans arrived. There's some debate about the megafauna extinctions, but no conclusive evidence either way. (I did app…

> The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA, Isn't the fascinating question "How did they arrive" ? My understanding is that timeline vastly pre-dates any kind of ship to make that voyage.

I think the gap between Asia and PNG (then connected to AU) has got down to 90km. Doable with bamboo rafts? Viewing a mountainous island from an elevated position would give them reason to attempt it. Timor to PNG is suggested as the water crossing needed.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That there is some Indian introgression into Aborigibal genomes is completely not surprising based on phenotypic characteristics of their faces as well as other aspects of their cultures like language. It was remarked upon by "previous simplistic pre-scientific" British settlers, who it turns out were quite right. Many other older theories have turned out to get support from the genetic evidence.

India was just a waypoint on the journey of human genes from Africa to Australia.

apparently india used to be connected to australia. and it split off and hit asia. india ramming into asia may have caused the himalayas.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He's talking about the fact that Aboriginals, not unlike Native Americans... They presumably asked for a source for both claims, your only provided one says you lived among them. Either you grew up among both populations or have provided no source for one of your claims.

You presumed wrong.

I don't see where that person specified which claim they wanted a source for, but I'll ask for a source for both claims.

I still have no idea if you grew up among Aboriginals or Native Americans, or what makes you so confident about the other race/culture's beliefs.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#148
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a source for this fact? Generalising opinions to a whole race is rarely wise. Perhaps like anyone else with religious beliefs, those who are offended simply want their culture respected.

[flagged]

Growing up where?

Australia? (big country) .. Western Desert (kind of specific) .. Redfern (very urban) .. etc.

Can you roughly indicate on a map?

There's a lot of different language groups and cultures, a lot of religuous beliefs, and a broad spread of skills both old and new.

https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high...

( FWiW I grew up in the Kimberley not far from the Mungalalu Truscott Airbase and am currently on Ballardong land )

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Individual-level_hum... Here's the same image in black and white: https://i.imgur.com/x2QzHgB.png . Do you see five clear clusters? I only found four: https://imgur.com/AFj2GWG.png .

I was speaking off the top of my head, hence the ~ preceding the 5. That said, more clusters may be visible on a 3D graph. The data itself has many more dimensions, and we see only a projection.

Sorry, I forget that I have to explain when I'm being sarcastic on Hacker News. The actual number of clear clusters I found was zero, maybe 2. The four groups I colored on the chart seem to follow the cleavages just as well as the ones shown originally, but they don't map to our culture's understanding of race at all. If we lived in a culture that believed that Europeans and Indigenous Alaskans were part of the same race, they could support that idea using that chart.

Perhaps more dimensions would reveal five or so clear clusters that correspond exactly to the races listed in the US census, but I suspect what it would actually reveal is that population genetics is really complicated and has lots of counter-intuitive cases that defy most people's naive expectations.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#150

The only interesting thing I know about Aborigines is they're the only known people who didn't invent the bow and arrow. As a hobbyist archer this is fascinating to me. They apparently didn't need it, as they're still around.

They also didn't invent the wheel or build a space program

or nuclear weapons. or pfas.
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