Humans are more closely related than we commonly think • Hacker News Board

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#101

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #86

jlawson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another important point here is that genes don't divide infinitely, so that if you go back some distance, you start finding ancestors from whom you actually didn't get any DNA. The book Who We Are and How We Got Here talks about this. When DNA recombines at conception, it only snips and stitches in a fairly limited number of places. It doesn't 'mix' finely like paint. It's more like taking two short pamphlets of ~25…

> The genetic split between timber wolves and Chihuahuas was like 5,000 years ago and I bet they have common ancestors much more recently than that. Well, for a start, this is completely wrong. Dogs diverged from wolves 20-40,000 years ago (lots of ambiguity over where exactly the divergence should be called), but from a now-extinct wolf species. While dogs and wolves _can_ interbreed, it doesn't happen naturally all…

[deleted]

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#102

Post by etabetapi » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #38

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The genetic evolutionary difference between distinct groups like Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, ... is something like 70,000 years of divergent evolution with very very minimal gene flow between the groups. Any citation?

The 'recent dispersal' started some 70-50,00 years ago, reaching Europe about 40,000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations#Homo_sa... Europeans have pretty low levels of sub-saharan genetic markers, with some remnant markets in southern Europe dating to the late Roman era, diminishing substantially as you move north. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_admixture_in_Europe

This is tautological, sub-saharan genetic markers are found predominantly in sub-saharan populations by definition.

Given how humanity has evolved, "european" markers are a subset of the diversity found in subsaharan populations that are overrepresented from founder effects, with very few exceptions. 40,000 years ago sounds like a long time, but it really isn't.

You need an amazingly small amount of migration (about one person per generation) to keep a population in sync with each other genetically.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#103

Post by Ericson2314 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island ?

IMO all this tree stuff doesn't pass my "finitist efficiency test". I don't think we should choose to work with this these super large exponential numbers just to quotient them out. Better to just us the "Family DAG" from the get-go.

What must be done by real demographers, but never covered in these articles from the general public, is some sort of "outbread---diversity" distribution. There is a clearly a conservation law in that genetic variation at larger scales depends on inbreeding / genetic homogeneity at smaller scales.

While I doubt the phenomenon is scale-free, there is still variation in the possible distributions at every scale. I want to know where humans have lied in that distribution-of-distributions over time. E.g. Europe is very homogeneous but if there was something more egalitarian than federalism would it be even more homogeneous?

My hunch is "no" because most of these Eurasian hierarchical societies had tones of elite man + non-elite women illegitimate children who were denied elite privileges, but I'd still like to see the definitive answer.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#104

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

nobodyandproud wrote: post #88

hnracer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korean people are genetically shorter than other races. Do you dispute that this would give them a profound disadvantage in basketball, all else equal? The narrative of all races being functionally the same phenotypically is prima facie absurd as even the most simplistic armchair observation reveals. Anyone who denies that Korean people have a genetic distadvantage in basketball must be acting in bad faith, and if th…

The height difference owes a lot to nutrition and the long-term living standards of the different countries. I bet the height difference in Koreans between the different generations alive today is quite different from one another. As for Olympics 100 years ago. Are you for real? Most of Asia was under the thumb of Imperialism. They weren’t exactly positioned to “send their best”. How many African nations participated…

[deleted]

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#105

Post by SamReidHughes » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #103

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island ? IMO all this tree stuff doesn't pass my "finitist efficiency test". I don't think we should choose to work with this these super large exponential numbers just to quotient them out. Better to just us the "Family DAG" from the get-go. What must be done by real demographers, but never covered in these articles from the general public, is some sort of "out…

Europe has also had laws prohibiting cousin marriage out to some fairly wide degrees at times, for various social ends, since Roman times.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#106

Post by diegoholiveira » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

jerzyt wrote: post #24

Disclaimer - the last thing I want to do is to start a religious debate on HN. So, please, don't down-vote me because I'm going to mention Bible here. But I find it interesting that the Individual Ancestors Point is not that far off from the Biblical estimate of the Earth's age of about 6,000 to 15,000 years. So forget about "planting" the planet with "fake" fossils, Adam and Eve are right on the same timeline as the…

> So, at least in this case, the Bible got the math down fairly well, and I'm bringing it up purely as a historical document here.

No. Genesis is not a historical document. It is an allegory about creation. Adam and Eve need not necessarily be the first humans, but they were the first to receive a divine spark called "the soul".

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#107

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

b0rsuk wrote: post #10

This was also a conclusion in a thoughty2 youtube video I watched: This Is Why Inbreeding Is So Dangerous https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmv-z851BOE I'm pretty this is why people all over the world like to keep track of their ancestry. People who don't will be more closely inbred.

You are the result of a thousand generations of cousin-breeding, and from zero to a couple dozen generations of not-cousin breeding. There are still current anti-incest traditions followed by modern people that pretty much read "You will marry your cousin." The sky doesn't fall in on them, although miscarriages and infant mortality are high, as well as a bunch of recessive diseases.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#108

Post by hnracer » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

nobodyandproud wrote: post #88

hnracer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korean people are genetically shorter than other races. Do you dispute that this would give them a profound disadvantage in basketball, all else equal? The narrative of all races being functionally the same phenotypically is prima facie absurd as even the most simplistic armchair observation reveals. Anyone who denies that Korean people have a genetic distadvantage in basketball must be acting in bad faith, and if th…

The height difference owes a lot to nutrition and the long-term living standards of the different countries. I bet the height difference in Koreans between the different generations alive today is quite different from one another. As for Olympics 100 years ago. Are you for real? Most of Asia was under the thumb of Imperialism. They weren’t exactly positioned to “send their best”. How many African nations participated…

The height difference between racial groups has a significant genetic component. Asian Americans are 8cm shorter than White Americans, despite being about equally wealthy.

This means that Asians are, on average, genetically disadvantaged when it comes to performance in, for example, basketball - meaning they are less likely to produce a star basketball player, all else equal, because there are less extremely tall Asians as a percentage of the population.

If we can't agree on this central claim then our differences are irreconcilable.

I understand that culture, nutrition, etc, makes a difference, and I don't dispute that, my only claim is that the genetics of race is playing a causal role here.

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#109

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

diegoholiveira wrote: post #106

jerzyt wrote: post #24

Disclaimer - the last thing I want to do is to start a religious debate on HN. So, please, don't down-vote me because I'm going to mention Bible here. But I find it interesting that the Individual Ancestors Point is not that far off from the Biblical estimate of the Earth's age of about 6,000 to 15,000 years. So forget about "planting" the planet with "fake" fossils, Adam and Eve are right on the same timeline as the…

> So, at least in this case, the Bible got the math down fairly well, and I'm bringing it up purely as a historical document here. No. Genesis is not a historical document. It is an allegory about creation. Adam and Eve need not necessarily be the first humans, but they were the first to receive a divine spark called "the soul".

[deleted]

Re: Humans are more closely related than we commonly think

#110

Post by hnracer » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

spicymaki wrote: post #78

hnracer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korean people are genetically shorter than other races. Do you dispute that this would give them a profound disadvantage in basketball, all else equal? The narrative of all races being functionally the same phenotypically is prima facie absurd as even the most simplistic armchair observation reveals. Anyone who denies that Korean people have a genetic distadvantage in basketball must be acting in bad faith, and if th…

Why is it so hard to believe that Black people dominate certain sports due to interest, opportunity, and hard work? Not some unsubstantiated group genetic advantage.

I think interest and hard work is definitely a factor, but I also think that genetics is playing a role.

The top 30 record holders in the 100m sprint are all of African descent:

https://www.worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/spr...

It's possible that White and Asian people just less interested, but it's not the sensible null hypothesis, given that we can observe with our own two eyes phenotypical differences in physique between the racial groups (e.g. Asians being shorter)