Ancient DNA Is Rewriting Human and Neanderthal History
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Interesting, I would love to see more information on this -- I had not heard this previously.
I... What does this even mean? Are you ashamed of your heritage?
I did the same thing - my Ancestry test came back with a whole lot of "Western Europe" - even more than I expected, actually.
I haven't done a DNA ancestry test yet, but I imagine I would be pretty happy to learn that there were several peoples/races?/cultures behind me, beyond my apparent South Asian heritage. This does not imply that I am ashamed of my origins - quite the contrary, in fact - but that I imagine it would be nice to ... be more, a citizen of the world, in a fashion.
I would expect this outlook of anyone with a cosmopolitan upbringing by default, as well as anyone who has exposed himself or herself to other cultures via media (books, movies, etc..).
Just take pride in who and what you are and where you came from.
That said, I don't understand how I've can be "proud" of which country you were born in, makes no sense to me.
Only whites seem to have this internal conflict, and that makes far less sense than being proud of the society your people created.
I guess it all depends where you draw the line, do you feel proud of your parents? Some people will say "No, I only feel proud about what I accomplished myself." And that's ok, that's his point of view, we could say this is a subjective matter, from my point of view, I feel proud of who I'm, I'm proud of my parents, and then I can extend that line and say I'm proud of my community, my city, my country, my civilization, I'm proud of being part of humanity, obviously that "proudness" will increase when that line is nearer to me, in other words the more relatable to myself the prouder I can be.
It's Paddy's day on Saturday - how does that celebration square with your claim?
I think one problem is that everyone has a different definition of the word 'pride'. Over here in Europe a lot of people think of pride as something you feels when you actively achieve something.
Ran a marathon? You can be proud of this!
You were born white/black/asian/... in France/Turkey/Spain? There is not much to be proud of, at the end of the day it's just pure luck who your parents are and in which culture you are born.
Schopenhauer said it best:
"The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen.
The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes.
But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority."
Also, to echo another commenter here, take the classic quote from Samuel Johnson: "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"
Also pride is considered to be the worst of the seven deadly sins for good reason. So tempting yet can be so poisonous.
Proud to be black or proud to be white.... Getting iffy depending on context. Of course, the opposite would be troublesome, ashamed to be black, or ashamed to be white.
I hope people feel their heritage is "cool" but I'd rather not have people feel their heritage or a different heritage is "better".
On the other hand, I feel that there are some societies that indeed contributed more to civilization than others. I don't think that's deniable. But I mean as a person one should not feel "better" or "worse" than any other person because of heritage.
As for feeling "better" I agree with you, only that pride is not necessarily a feeling of superiority. In most cases it is an acknowledgement of something related to the individual that he or she feels is inherently good. Not everyone associates good with better.
It's something odd. As if they are somewhat uncomfortable on their own skin. Shame is the wrong word, but i can't find the right descriptor. On the other hand, i think this points to social pressures that make people feel that way about themselves.
There's dignity in guilt, and it's essential for growth. You really don't seem to understand the human condition.
The most interesting result is the least expected result that doesn't include bad news. Outside relatively small circles, the vast majority of white people will lose none of their privilege or social position if they find out their ancestry includes something unexpected. It's clearly pretty widespread too, because all of the 23andMe advertising includes people ostensibly of European descent who find out they've got unexpected ancestry.
In US, varied ancestry is a norm if I'm not mistaken, so having a "pure" heritage makes you unique. In many countries it's the opposite - the default is "pure" heritage, and having varied background is what makes you stand out.
Also, from the health perspective, varied ancestry is better if I'm not mistaken. Kind of like pure breed animals being less healthy in general, compared to mixtures.
I'm 99.5% European (86% Eastern European), and 0.5% East Asian/Native American. I hoped for more varied ancestry when I received the results.
To find out (through a 23andMe report showing 99.9% Euro genes) it wasn't true was unsettling, like I'm not really who I thought I was and also have much less of a connection to the area. Also disappointed because it means someone in my family lied to all of us about where they came from.
The question this brings up is how different are Neanderthals from Homo sapiens? I was taught that the definition of a species is that two individuals could reproduce and have fertile offspring. It seems there are exceptions to this rule, (as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are different species).
Edit: correct mules to horses
It's not entirely unlike dogs and wolves, which can interbreed fluently. There are dozens of subspecies of Canis Lupus (red wolves, gray wolves, etc, etc), and one of them is Canis Lupus Familiaris, the domestic dog.
This somewhat problematic however because there is rarely enough data about a species to create a complete phylogeny of a species and its common ancestors. Additionally, it is thought that this concept would lead to the naming of many more species than we presently recognize. If you’re interested in this kind of thing I would encourage you to check out the link below!
http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/from_the_lab/species-concept...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/science/a-new-theory-on-h...
This one for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4TLaRSJN2k
I mean - Neanderthals are pretty closely related to us us, couldn't genetic similarities be a result of that common origin rather than interbreeding. How can DNA tell that apart?
When we see modern populations that carry neanderthal genes that are better conserved within the population than some human-specific genes are with other human populations, we can infer that the neanderthal intermixing happened after humans became... human.
At large scale, many such inferences can be combined to form a historical map of population mixing and the migrations implied... That's what the research in the article is about.
In these cases of analyzing really old DNA where only the DNA remains, I wonder how researchers make decisions about selecting what they want to express between varying attributes? I.e., the example used in the article about representing "Cheddar Man" - did they have some basis for selecting the traits to visualize or was it arbitrary?
I imagine they want a future where their genes carry on while you are interested in "knowledge that lasts"
You could say they are gene-centric and you are meme-centric?
Of two futures, which would you prefer?
1. Where your descendants/relatives are alive but have little in common with your values (eg compare bronze age to now)
2. You have no genetic descendants/relatives but whatever exists (robots, aliens, planet of the apes) shares your value system.
Seems like you're suggesting inbreeding is favorable for procreation.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-incest-is-be...
There's a diversity of phenotypes around the world because groups of humans have been in reproductive isolation. I'm sure that will continue for various reasons (assortive mating, religion or immigration restriction like many East Asian countries). From memory you need <2% inter-marriage rate per generation for your group to diverge.
Some people want to preserve reproductively isolated groups, rather than form a larger gene pool (though this is betting against human lust and cheap air travel)
If you are more related to your country than to the average human on earth (true historically), and your country adopt pro-natal policies rather than immigration of people who are genetically distant from you, you would increase the number of genes similar to you in the global population.
- Marry / procreate with an opposite you're attracted to. - End stasis-inducing IP monopolies. - Let other people contribute to your codebase when practical. - Focus on trying to benefit from immigration rather than eliminating it. - Don't let political units at any level get so powerful that you can never refactor your culture in a different way.
Regarding your contingencies, I put zero probability on my creations (kids, code, businesses) resembling me for long. I wouldn't wish them to as I doubt I'll be useful in their world. I'd like it if they could trace part of their prosperity to values or traits I imparted, but you have to find notions of continuity and contribution that aren't just a distance function from yourself.
I think this is a good attitude (or maybe just acceptance of the inevitable!)
That's a false choice, based on these flawed assumptions:
- That genetic descent somehow diminishes the transmission of culture (or "memes" as you call it).
- That we don't have many bronze age values today. We do have them, evidenced by the fact that many people follow values of religions established in the bronze age.
- That the inevitable result of what you call a "meme-centric" direction of progress is genetic extinction for humans.
>> many bronze age values today
Most people have adopted the bronze age values of tribes other than their ancestors.
There are 4B Muslims and Christians, but only 15M Jews, so Abraham has over 250x as many carriers of his ideas as carriers of his genes.
Do we know that Abraham was a specific person whose genes we can trace rather than a mythological character?
Even if you assume he was a real person, how can we be certain that the common ideas in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism originated with him? There's quite a bit of evidence that it was cobbled together over time from many sources (Israel, Egypt, Sumeria, Mesopotamia, etc.)