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Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

theguardian.com

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Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#321

Post by dumbo-octopus »

juunpp wrote: post #319
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is very detached from reality. The Jewish tribe is defined as being descended from Israel, with folks independently joining as a rather rare corner case. On the other hand, Christians are defined to be those people who have heard the gospel and chosen to accept Jesus as their Lord. It’s as if you said my family didn’t share DNA with me because an adoption or two had occurred over the centuries. It’s a b…

pvaldes is saying that biologically/genetically, the difference is irrelevant. And it is because we're >99% identical. https://www.genome.gov/dna-day/15-ways/human-genomic-variati...

If he were to be saying that, he’d be terribly misinformed. Slight specific genetic changes can have absolutely massive impacts, hand waving “ninety nine percent of us is a banana!”-type speak is brain-dead.

I’ll let him speak for himself.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#322

Post by danans »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #285
danans wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you specifically claiming that a common ancestor does not exist, or that genetic information does not spread to offspring? I'm not making either of those claims. The first is an article of faith, and the second is trivially true. I'm stating that one can't claim a particular set of DNA patterns makes someone "Jewish", because DNA is a biological phenomenon, and ethnicity/culture/religion are cultural phenomena.

You seem very unaware of how the Jewish tribe works. Genetics and family line tracing are very much a core concept.

I'm aware of family line tracing for establishing tribal identity. It's not something unique to Judaism.

DNA patterns often reflect the history of rigid social organization patterns like tribes (and indeed are essential for genetic risk management provided by organizations like Dor Yeshorim).

But nobody was tracing ancestry using DNA until the latter half of the 20th century, so claiming DNA as a basis of tribal identity seems quite anachronistic.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#323

Post by juunpp »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #321
juunpp wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pvaldes is saying that biologically/genetically, the difference is irrelevant. And it is because we're >99% identical. https://www.genome.gov/dna-day/15-ways/human-genomic-variati...

If he were to be saying that, he’d be terribly misinformed. Slight specific genetic changes can have absolutely massive impacts, hand waving “ninety nine percent of us is a banana!”-type speak is brain-dead. I’ll let him speak for himself.

Nobody questions that the impact of those changes can be large. That still does not take away from the fact that the genetic makeup of humans is by and large nearly identical. My neighbour is still an homo sapiens and genetically near-identical to me even though he's Chinese and I am not. Whether he considers himself a descendant of the emperor Qin and, for that reason, deserves to be in a socially distinct category, is entirely a different matter.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#324

Post by lazide »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #320
juunpp wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take from your earlier point, but the evangelisms were not written by him. His teaching was oral and experiential, not written.

Yes. Still, His work is documented.

Like Siddhartha Gautama, and Muhammad, not by themselves however.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#325

Post by jjk166 »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #311
jjk166 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you personally are a direct descendant of Abraham, or any other specific individual who lived approximately 3000 years ago, statistically you do not carry any DNA from that ancestor. While there are some nuances relating to differences in how the different sexes pass on their genes, as a rough approximation you carry half the base pairs of each of your parents, who each carry roughly half from their parents, and s…

So by that logic nobody has any DNA in common with neanderthals, right? Try again. You’re missing a big, big , gotcha.

No one has any DNA that can be traced to a specific Neanderthal, no.

Of course people have DNA in common with their ancestors as a group, hell we share a lot in common with fish. But it's because these genes are common that they enter and re-enter your family tree at multiple points.

And your mitochondrial DNA definitely doesn't descend from Abraham, a male incapable of passing on mitochondrial DNA, so there's a reason I gloss over female line descent.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#326

Post by chipdart »

mc32 wrote: post #226
Affric wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the ‘reconquista’ “ill named”? Also, Columbus largely made his own legend. Everyone told him he was wrong (and he was) but he just so happened to discover land people might actually want. And so he was very much vindicated by the discovery in his own eyes. And it was daring. Everyone rightly told him he was mad and incorrectly told him he would die. It was one of the craziest expeditions of all time. And becau…

I also don’t think it’s ill named. The moors conquered and the Catholics took it back. It doesn’t defy logic.

> The moors conquered and the Catholics took it back.

This take only makes sense if you argue the Romans took it back, which would only be a valid claim from the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church, not war lords from the Iberian Peninsula.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#327

Post by dumbo-octopus »

danans wrote: post #322
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem very unaware of how the Jewish tribe works. Genetics and family line tracing are very much a core concept.

I'm aware of family line tracing for establishing tribal identity. It's not something unique to Judaism. DNA patterns often reflect the history of rigid social organization patterns like tribes (and indeed are essential for genetic risk management provided by organizations like Dor Yeshorim). But nobody was tracing ancestry using DNA until the latter half of the 20th century, so claiming DNA as a basis of tribal iden…

What is your claim exactly? It seems as if you think somehow DNA didn’t exist as a means of transferring genetic information to offspring prior to it being discovered. I can’t imagine you actually think that, so I’m at a loss for what your point might be.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#328

Post by dumbo-octopus »

jjk166 wrote: post #325
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by that logic nobody has any DNA in common with neanderthals, right? Try again. You’re missing a big, big , gotcha.

No one has any DNA that can be traced to a specific Neanderthal, no. Of course people have DNA in common with their ancestors as a group, hell we share a lot in common with fish. But it's because these genes are common that they enter and re-enter your family tree at multiple points. And your mitochondrial DNA definitely doesn't descend from Abraham, a male incapable of passing on mitochondrial DNA, so there's a reas…

Your pseudoscience above would make it seem nobody has any DNA from any ancestors at all, as there were not your 10^Whatever creatures ever in existence. Once you figure out the bug in your logic there, you will perhaps see the failure of the rest of your argument. Hint: inbreeding.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#329

Post by InDubioProRubio »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #272
InDubioProRubio wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair- they all were and are like that, back then and now. It just that the industrialization dividend created a cultural power asymmetry which made those nightmares a permanently one sided affair for a while.

Why do we need "to be fair" about who we celebrate? I don't understand why anyone is arguing the point that we shouldn't celebrate people who did awful things. They also weren't all the same. Not everyone goes around enslaving people and using their life to seek riches and fame. I don't think anyone complains about historical figures who, flaws and all, fought for higher ideals like personal liberty.

Because they were all horrible people? The atctecs were the russians of south america- a grueling empire, that had it won the run to steam ships first would have invaded africa and europe, to build human sacrifice pyramids?

They are just characters, surfing the waves of technological change and resulting cultural power asymmetries. They are surprisingly irrelevant and replaceable. But they are the representatives of cultural deficiencies, propelled onwards by geography and circumstances into moments of clarity, where one party is thrown into a "catchup" race at all costs to prevent the other from overtaking it now or later.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#330

Post by Tor3 »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #287
Tor3 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if Abraham _did_ exist, at this point in time it's like trying to distinguish a drop of water from the ocean it's now living in. That's how little would have remained of Abraham's DNA so much later.

If this were true, genetic testing wouldn’t be able to identify folks as Ashkanazi Jewish, for instance. But it can. And many phenotypes do the same.

I was replying to the claim that Abraham's DNA (if he existed) could be traced in today's Jewish population. And that _is_ impossible. In any case, it's not like you identify Ashkanazi Jews from DNA, instead it's that when DNA-checking people who self-identify as Ashkanazi then you find Middle Eastern ancestry. To recite Wikipedia's citation: '.. while certain detectable Middle Eastern genetic components exist in numerous Jewish communities, there is no evidence for a single Jewish prototype, and that "any general biological definition of Jews is meaningless"'
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