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DNA Suggests Three Basic Human Groups
Death Metal writes "All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made — the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens."
Three Sons of Noah are supposed to be the ancestors of us all.
Now tell me something I DON'T know.
I've come to believe that human's are simply programmed to line themselves up in groups, to fight imagined or real enemies in other groups. We're raised on it, jocks vs nerds becomes blacks vs whites vs christians vs atheists vs global warming followers vs global warming deniers vs pro-life vs pro-choice vs republicans vs democrats vs whatever.
So who else believes this will be the next big advance in 'scientifically supported' bigotry? After all, we now have proof we're better/smarter/more virtuous/taller than *them*.
People who do things, people who don't do a thing, and people who wait for things to be done by others.
1. Those who make things happen
2. Those who watch things happen
3. Those who wonder what happened
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
As far as I can tell, this story attempts to make three points:
1. Human genomes tend to cluster into three groups: african, eurasian, and east asian.
2. We expected that the genomes of different ethnic groups would be very different. They aren't.
3. Neutral drift is the major story in how ethic groups' genomes differ.
This pretty much follows the contours of the current orthodoxy in population genetics (with certain distinct exceptions).
So are these three points meaningfully true?
1. Human genomes tend to cluster into three groups: african, eurasian, and east asian.
Generally speaking they /do/ cluster this way. Of course, you can make room for as few or as many clusters as you want-- if it was two, it'd be african/everything else. Three, african/eurasian/east asian. Four, perhaps african/eurasian/east asian/naitive american. Five, perhaps west african/east african/eurasian/east asian/naitive american. From what I've read, the most elegant statistical clusters arise when you allow for four groups (splitting native americans off from east asians). Of course, this clustering gets more complex when you consider admixture populations (e.g., the majority of south america and mexico).
2. We expected that the genomes of different ethnic groups would be very different. They aren't.
It's hard to say this is true or false yet, because we simply don't know how functionally significant these differences are. Two genomes may look very similar, yet be very different in many very significant ways.
3. Neutral drift is the major story in how ethic groups' genomes differ.
This is code for a very contentious question-- are ethnic differences merely skin-deep? The fact is, we don't know yet. There's a lot of research that points to yes; there's a lot of research that points to no. The answer to this is undoubtedly going to turn out to be: yes and no, depending on the context and the threshold you look at.
I take a general offense to the nature of this article, presenting this as though it is some sort of surprise. Researches along time ago classified people into 3 groups and this is merely genetic confirmation of the original findings. They classified people in 3 groups a long time ago, I suppose this is DNA confirmation of the initial categories: Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid.
non-PC names these days I suppose, but that's what they were called.
Unless one of Noah's sons was black, one was white, and one was east-asian, this is pretty much not possible.
I'd add a fourth point that to me is even more interesting (and apparently comes from the data):
* [The population split away from Africa 70K years ago, and then that sub-population splitting again 40K years ago into Eurasian and East Asian groups. The African source population is 130K years old.]
Advances in communication and transportation in the last century mean that members of these three groups are migrating away from the areas their ancestors lived in. I live in Australia but my ancestors came from England. My wife was born in Malaysia but her ancestors came from China. Our son is a mix of two of the groups defined by TFA.
Yesterday he brought home a school project to work on. Each child in the class has to fill in a page in a scrap book about themselves. His classmates come from England, Spain, China, Egypt, Australia (one Aboriginal boy) and Turkey. The next generation here will be even more mixed than the last.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Only if you read the book of Genesis like a Catholic does- as an allegorical story explaining many things about the natural world and how to live in it.
Otherwise, no. And in fact, for the racists out there, this proves once and for all that Africans, of the three groups, are the most evolved, with the most diversity. The other two groups are subgroup descendants of the Africans.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
there's more Chinese people than any other ethic group. Chances are because you are posting on Slashdot with perfect English YOU are a minority.
Ya i agree, Captain Obvious strikes again, and got tons of funding to do it.
What is next, 1/2 a million to find out men don't like condoms? oh wait, that was last week..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Not really, humans as a species are just about as homogeneous as you're going to get, which makes it difficult to make those sorts of claims stick. Just as much of suggesting that Africans are inferior as superior. Additionally, there's been some research to suggest that African populations have more genetic diversity than other groups, which I wouldn't think would contribute to the suggestion that they're any more or less well adapted than other groups.
;)
But then again, if it drives white supremecists nuts, why bother arguing.
There are. Those that understand trinary, those who don't, and those that mistake it for binary.
In physical anthropology the term is one of the three general racial classifications of humans â" Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. Under this classification scheme, humans are divisible into broad sub-groups based on phenotypic characteristics such as cranial and skeletal morphology. Such classifications remain in use today in the fields of anthropology and forensics to help identify the ethnicity, lineage and origin of human remains.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Humans, Cylons, and descendants of the aboriginals of this planet.
Duh!
Please explain this inbreeding problem thingy.
The way I understand it, inbreeding is a problem because of mutations in our genes.. with two different genes in the same place, the non-broken one can make up for the mutated one, but with inbreeding there's no redundancy.
Perhaps Noah's offspring hadn't evolved enough to have these corrupted genes - in that case, there wouldn't be a problem. (If I recall correctly there wasn't any law against marrying siblings until way later)
Wow! Only three groups of humans. Then we have only one question left to answer:
Which group do we put on the B-Ark?
--
Toro
(My apologies to the late Adams-Douglas-Adams and his estate.)
The advice and truths given in the Bible are credible because they mirror the real personal stories and events that happen in the world around us. Many myths and religions try to do the same, and they get some things right, but there is always the element of mysticism that has been injected by people trying to gain personal advantage. I know that many "Christians" have tried to do this too (most notably the catholic church and their instance that only the Pope can talk to God, which is in direct contradiction to the primary message of pretty much every book of the Bible, they also asserted in the past that only a properly educated person should be allowed to read the Bible), but such lies are easily uncovered by even a cursory independent look at the Bible.
There is nowhere in the bible where it says giving sacrifices will bring a good harvest (though it does say that you should make sacrifices to atone for your sins and celebrate God), or that your God-given leader will bring you to God (though it does say that Jesus loves you and has opened they way for you). It also doesn't say that you can get to heaven through your own personal works (though it does talk about the importance bearing good fruit).
There are a number of other elements to most religions which the Bible lacks, but the main difference is that most religious are designed to promote cohesion in society by establishing a theological basis for a hierarchal leadership structure (much the same way modern economics, philosophy and political science have established a theoretical basis for the same kind of structure). The Bible seeks to promote cohesion by explaining the benefits of good social behavior and uncovering the lies of society (society tries to tell us that bad behaviors like promiscuity, deceitfulness, idolatry and hedonism will make us happy, while in truth those behaviors separate us from the life-giving society we are a part of and will only lead to isolation and tragedy).
Please do not think that the behavior of most people who call themselves Christians is indicative of the content of the Bible. Many people use the Church as a social club to further their own worldly goals. Instead, read the Bible (it's not much longer than Atlas Shrugged, which you should also read BTW) with an open mind and see whether or not you agree that it is a better way to go about living.
You don't produce any citations, but I believe you are referring to a single study on IQ which concluded that asian populations had a higher mean and mode IQ than whites who, in turn, scored higher than blacks. There are several problems with this study.
The most obvious is that IQ is a terrible measure of innate intelligence. It is largely based on verbal reasoning, which is a small subset of what is traditionally regarded as intelligence. Not only is it a small subset, it's one that is improved a lot by education. Most people get a variation of around 20 points when they take different IQ tests, and generally the score improves by a few points on each subsequent test. If your education system focusses on verbal reasoning then you will score more highly in an IQ test.
Another major problem was the tiny variation in the results. Their results showed a variance of under ten IQ points between the top of the black bell curve and the top of the asian bell curve (at both the top and bottom ends, they were similar). On average, therefore, a black person will score 10 points worse than an asian person. Due to the variation between repeated IQ tests, this is completely meaningless. The variation between the same person taking two different IQ tests is likely to be greater than the variation between ethnic groups.
So, the study conclusively showed that the variation in a relatively meaningless test between members of different ethnic groups was small enough to be counted as experimental error, but presented its results as demonstrating racial superiority. I can't think why this isn't used in schools.
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That sounds a little like wishful thinking. In just a few generations we've made tremendous progress with prejudice, however, it is rampant in its grossest forms in much of the world, and about 10% of westerners, who are "ethnocentric".
Then there's covert racism, which is till common in modern society. Peoples behaviour choices are influenced unduly by racial considerations - esp. when it's personal (eg: choosing a family doctor), or ambiguous (eg: I didn't employ the black person because of his credentials).
There are many ways to measure covert racism, however, be wary of the IAT, it's highly controversial, so take what the researchers say about it with a grain of salt. Behavioural measures are the best (ie: watching what people *do*).
It seems that prejudice is built into the human condition - at least at a subtle level:
That's just who we are as human beings, and it means that we're always going to tread a fine line between in-group preference and out-group prejudice, and have difficulty even seeing that that's what we're doing. And that's in ideal situations when there are plenty of resources for everyone.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right