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Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

nature.com

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Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#71

Post by teamonkey »

nostromo wrote: post #8
AlotOfReading wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason no one wants to talk is that these discussions are always co-opted by racists wanting to affirm their beliefs, regardless of the underlying science. Reich in particular is borderline deliberate about attracting those sorts with his lab's research, because of how badly he chooses to handle the topic and terminology of race.

Science is about truth not social outcomes. People keep wondering why trust in scientific findings is in free fall. A big part of it is because many scientists have become comfortable lying when they feel it’s for a noble cause.

Scientists are not lying. Reich is notable in his field and no-one is disputing his genetic research.

What scientists are wary of is how any discussion in the field gets jumped on and twisted into ammunition to reinforce racist beliefs, whether the science actually supports this or not.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#72

Post by vjjsejj »

krapp wrote: post #47
IncreasePosts wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do humans not fit the standards for being broken into multiple subspecies? I assumed that they would but "the science community" is too scared of the implications when idiots learn about it. I look at a sumatran tiger and a Siberian tiger and I see a lot less variance than I see when I look at a pygmy, a Norwegian, an sentinel islander, and a han Chinese person

>Do humans not fit the standards for being broken into multiple subspecies? No. Multiple human subspecies did once exist (examples being Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo Erectus, and Homo Floresiensis) but only our species, Homo Sapiens, remains (with traces of Neanderthal DNA so there was some interbreeding.) However race is a cultural and social construct. Different human races are not different human subspecies. A P…

Well humans and chimpanzees share almost 99% of their DNA despite being quite distant relative so that number is somewhat deceptive. Not disagreeing with the overall point of course

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#73

Post by vjjsejj »

beloch wrote: post #64
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the DNA of the sumatran tiger and a Siberian tiger is also over 99% identical?

The DNA of humans and chimps is 98.8% identical. The percent difference between genomes of species is one of those tricky measures that doesn't really give good intuition. I find it much more useful to think in terms of the time since two species shared a common ancestor. e.g. For humans and chimps, that's several million years. For Sumatran and Siberian tigers, it's around a hundred thousand years.

> it's around a hundred thousand years.

So not that far away since modern humans began splitting up into separate subgroups outside of Africa? Of course there have been quite a bit of intermixing since then (more so in Eurasia than the more isolated parts of the world before the modern times, though)

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#74

Post by vjjsejj »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #68
beloch wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DNA of humans and chimps is 98.8% identical. The percent difference between genomes of species is one of those tricky measures that doesn't really give good intuition. I find it much more useful to think in terms of the time since two species shared a common ancestor. e.g. For humans and chimps, that's several million years. For Sumatran and Siberian tigers, it's around a hundred thousand years.

What's the most recent common ancestor between an North Sentinel islander and a Norwegian? Mitochondrial Eve is 150kya

Probably less than 40k? Since it took a while for modern humans to leave Africa.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#75

Post by vjjsejj »

verisimi wrote: post #63
SloppyDrive wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We dont categorize humans that way; not because humans are different but because of cultural norms. The generous idea is that "subspecies" does not provide an anthropologist a useful lens to look at humanity, therefore we do not classify. The alternative is that "subspecies" is too close to "race" for scientists, publishers, and funding bodies to touch, so its deliberately ignored.

I agree - cultural educating trumps scientific definitions.

It’s not like those scientific definitions are particularly consistent or stable, though. In a large part it’s still a matter of convention when it comes to non human species as well

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#76

Post by cwmoore »

chrisweekly wrote: post #46
showerst wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Taraxacum officinale, the common dandelion? It’s not quite all across the globe but pretty close, and is so adapted that it is not considered invasive any more in most places.

Or, it's equally invasive everywhere.

Lol everywhere there are manicured lawns?

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#77

Post by Mikhail_K »

From the article:

We finally observed signals of selection for combinations of alleles that today are associated with three correlated behavioural traits: scores on intelligence tests (increasing 0.74±0.12), household income (increasing 1.12±0.12) and years of schooling (increasing 0.63±0.13). These signals are all highly polygenic, and we have to drop 449–1,056 loci for the signals to become non-significant(Extended Data Fig.10). The signals are largely driven by selection before approximately 2,000 years , after which tends towards zero.

That's the part that the speech police is afraid of.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#78

Post by Nesco »

teamonkey wrote: post #71
nostromo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is about truth not social outcomes. People keep wondering why trust in scientific findings is in free fall. A big part of it is because many scientists have become comfortable lying when they feel it’s for a noble cause.

Scientists are not lying. Reich is notable in his field and no-one is disputing his genetic research. What scientists are wary of is how any discussion in the field gets jumped on and twisted into ammunition to reinforce racist beliefs, whether the science actually supports this or not.

“What scientists are wary of is how any discussion in the field gets jumped on and twisted into ammunition to reinforce racist beliefs”

Yet nothing ruined the reputation of the scientific establishment more in recent time than their tendency to change their behaviours and adapt their beliefs for political motives

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#79

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

vjjsejj wrote: post #74
IncreasePosts wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the most recent common ancestor between an North Sentinel islander and a Norwegian? Mitochondrial Eve is 150kya

Probably less than 40k? Since it took a while for modern humans to leave Africa.

I don’t think the out-of-africa hypothesis is defensible in light of recent archeological findings, and, incidentally, DNA complexity analysis.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#80

Post by abc123abc123 »

like_any_other wrote: post #7

Is there any species, other than humans, that is found all across the globe (i.e. geographically separated), and has not differentiated into subspecies? Wolves, elephants, tigers, bears, and foxes have all been categorized into multiple subspecies each, distinct but able to interbreed.

So have humans. There are white, red, black, brown, yellow people, and they live in their own happy places on the planet, except for the fact that we now move them around by plane, boat and goat.
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