DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t all Scandinavian • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by asveikau » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

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 learning Romance languages in my college years, which led me to read about history of various Romance-speaking countries. Look at the Latins. They were a small group in Lazio (Latium). Their culture expanded and absorbed the whole of Italy and then Europe and much of North Africa. (Well known story.) In each of these places there were distinct ethnic divisions, languages, cultures ... which shortly vanished and assimilated. We know very little of those distinctions today. The empire fell and outside sources came in, Germanic peoples, maybe Arabs and North Africans especially in the south. Eventually separate nation-states came about. Today many people assume those nations that emerged are homogeneous identities or ethnicities. They're not really.

Additionally, race in the United States of course has a bunch of bullshit in its history about "white people", where "white people" is a loosely defined and moving definition. I was recently reading about very odd phrases that used to exist, like "octoroon" to describe people with 7 european great-grandparents and 1 African-descended one. They bothered having a word for this. They looked pretty much like "white people". They were discriminated against. To a lesser extent, immigrants from non British or non Germanic parts of Europe were also discriminated against as if "nonwhite". In this 1899 drawing, Anglo-Saxon and German-descended Americans are said to be racially superior to Irish and Iberians, because those are said to share traits and ancestry with black people: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scientific_racism_ir...

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

#52

Post by dzvYJk7Bjx » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

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,…

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 race is a social construct then there isn't a Black nation, Black peoples, or anything ancestral to anyone who identifies as Black. Is that a stance you will defend? It seems like there is a clear definition of race for Black and Brown people but not for white people, often done so politically, and I think that bias is why people question whether the headlines of the GP article are valid and at present it does seem to be a stretch to call Cheddar Man "black".

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

#53

Post by wisty » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

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…

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 establishment drove Ignaz Semmelweis to an early grave for daring to suggest doctors wash their hands? The days of the "Invisible College" (why couldn't the enlightenment happen in a real college?)? The days of Freud?

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

#54

Post by dboreham » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:38 AM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #27

tpmx wrote: post #6

The brought back a lot of DNA diversity from their tours abroad. That result is to be expected.

Yeah, that would be totally expected but the paper isn't even saying that. It's specifically about someone buried as a viking in a settlement in Scotland being non-Scandinavian.

No true Scandinavian.

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

#55

Post by mongol » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #5

I was really hoping for new information on a statistically significant difference in the amount of Neanderthal DNA in old Viking skeletons versus modern time Scandinavians.

Considering that Scandinavia was covered in ice (Weichselian glaciation) when the Neanderthals died out, there is no reason to believe that there would be any such differenve.

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

#56

Post by esperent » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

wisty wrote: post #53

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…

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 guy on the web dismissing all of that as "a few technical skills for teenagers".

Yes, there are some soft degrees out there, and universities have many problems, like all institutions. And I met my fair share of lazy tenured professors amongst the good ones. But come on, if you've got to dismiss people like this to make a point, there's something wrong with the way you're going about it.

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

#57

Post by Apofis » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:21 AM UTC

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 hate to sound like a hardcore conservative"... don't make excuses for conservative views, they are not exclusive to political leanings. Being careful isn't political.

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

#58

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:36 AM UTC

trhway wrote: post #46

photonemitter wrote: post #39

So... 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 Mon…

Some years ago I watched an interesting documentary on how a bunch of viking swords that all bear the same distinctive engraving were very likely made of steel from Persia. The doc claimed that they were likely using a route along the Volga to get down to the Caspian routinely.

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

#59

Post by vmh1928 » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:52 AM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #24

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…

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.

  Focusing on skin and eye color seems imprecise and really, why even bring it up?  DNA mutations or markers spread in a population.  Then some members of that population travel to distant lands and intermarry (or not, maybe just die,) and spread their DNA mutations around and then die.  Hundreds of year later someone sequences the DNA and says, hmm, here's a marker for X population but I found it in territory Y indicating that people moved around or were taken as slaves so there was a lot more mixing than history expects.   
   Does your theory about the original Britons imply some direct-from- migration?  If so you'd expect markers for populations on that continent to be present in historical samples without the associated markers associated with a migration via a more lengthy route.   So let's test for that which will either prove or not-prove the theory and leave the silly adjectives for twitter.

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

#60

Post by int_19h » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:58 AM UTC

etc-hosts wrote: post #26

Angeo34 wrote: post #20

I thought this was obvious because of the Kiyv Rus

If you're thinking of the Ukraine/Russian Origin story of Kyivan Rus, do you think Scandinavians settled in the Russia/Ukraine area? There's evidence there was trade between the various empires. I don't think that's addressing the "DNA of the Vikings" (whoever the Vikings may have been)

The ruling elite of Kievan Rus was originally all Scandinavian, speaking Old Norse, and holding to their customs. This was still the case when they conquered Kiev. But then they gradually intermingled with the local Slavic nobility, switched to Eastern Slavic as the native language, and adopted the local names.

It's the bit about the names that's most telling, IMO. If you follow the Primary Chronicle (the earliest source on this), the first rulers of Rus were Rurik, Oleg, Igor, Olga, Svyatoslav, and Vladimir. The first four names are unambiguously Slavic adaptations of Scandinavian names: Hrorekr, Helgi, and Ingvar. Svyatoslav is an unambiguously Slavic name, but if you deconstruct it, its constituent parts are "holy" and "glory", which correspond to the earlier names Helgi and Hrorekr, respectively - so it's quite possible that it was deliberately constructed as a subtle translated reference. And then Vladimir is a purely Slavic name (Waldemar is a Norse / High German cognate, but it was derived from Vladimir, not the other way around).