I hope this doesn’t come off as a persnicket, and I promise I am being helpful here, or you know, trying, but we spell this “bated.”
“Main Entry: 1bate
Pronunciation: 'bAt
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): bat·ed; bat·ing
Etymology: Middle English, short for abaten to abate
Date: 14th century
transitive senses
1 : to reduce the force or intensity of : RESTRAIN <with bated breath>”
You know, “I’m holding my breath while I await your answer” I assume this has something to do with, oh…we might hold our breath while watching a game winning field goal, say. I think I’ve heard “breathless anticipation.” You could obviously use this construction sarcastically, although that kind of fun just hurts people, so I do not recommend it.
Coll, there has been Nazi Science, there has been Socialist Science and there has been Creationist Science. When politicians/demagogues dictate what is science, any inquiry that does not toe their political line is suspect and usually attacked with a frenzy that is very characteristic of your posts. I place the PC people in that illustrative company. I also confess to an uncontrollable urge to rattle your cage.
For some reason Anthro departments have more Marxists than the Chinese politburo. Is this a hangover from the Sixties? Have they only been giving tenure to fellow travellers for the last 35 years?
Ah, yes, good old Lamarckianism. Soviet science is a better phrase
I take this to mean you either were to lazy or you were unable to understand the evidence? The political line is usually characterized, from what I have seen from it, by vague assertions, frequent recourse to ad hominem and a more or less strict avoidance of dealing with the best peer reviewed literature.
Now, since I have actually posted real data, which one can easily follow up – indeed some of it is even online for the truly lazy-- I’ve given you the tools with which to come up with a substantive as opposed to political critique. I await some critique from you which would indicate that some one is spinning the genes from a political standpoint. The bona fides are there, dig in and come up with a critique.
**
Actually you fit the category perfectly – your method of argument looks, well, just like those of creation science. Including attacks on the conclusions which skirt the very issue of the data. Either we’re doing science --which then we want to talk data-- or we’re doing politics, which then we want to sling around sloppy charges.
Assertions, assertions, assertions. Your “evidence” for Marxism among anthropologists is what? Not that this has much to do with me since I’m not nor have I ever been a member of that much maligned group. (In fact if you had read a single citation I’ve given you, you’d find that most of what I have presented comes from other fields, notably human genetics.)
It seems a small group of racialists like to sling around the marxist label, what’s the evidence? I tend to read paleoanthropological texts, and I have to say I am unable to think of anything which strikes me as vaguely Marxist.
So, is there any basis at all to your ad hominem other than you feel challenged by the data generated? Do you have a substantive critique of the data?
Aside:
On Baited/Bated Breath
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. Darn it, damned idioms get me every time. Must do penance.
Actually, they DO! Do the names Venus and Serena ring any bells?
However, I concede one small point: black athletes don’t dominate tennis or cycling the way they do many other sports. MONEY is the main reason. For the most part, if you want to become a great golfer, tennis player, simmer or cyclist, it helps immensely to grow up in a rich family that belongs to a country club. Yes, you CAN learn tennis on public courts in city parks (as the Williams sisters and Arthur Ashe did), you CAN learn to play golf on municipal courses (as Lee Trevino did), etc., and you CAN learn to swim at public pools. But it’s hard to become a champion without personalized instruction from a qualified pro. All in all, it’s probably miraculous that there have been as many Venuses, Serenas, Ashes, and Trevinos as there have been.
If and when black Americans become as affluent as white Americans, we’ll see them dominate tennis and cycling, too.
Collounsbury, for what it’s worth, you’ve convinced me. And I’m someone who did not come into this subject with a belief that it’s automatically racist to suggest that blacks are better at (some) sports than non-blacks—I naively figured that sure, there are probably some genetic differences going on here that affect physical abilities, and so what? Black genes for faster marathon running? Cool, wish Mom or Dad had married one!
And I still think that if there were any reliable evidence at all to support this belief, there would be nothing wrong or immoral about holding it. But based on what you’ve said and the sources you’ve cited, it seems to me irrefutable, in the present state of our knowledge, that there is absolutely no genetic uniqueness about the group of people we vaguely and inaccurately call “black”. And it follows that performance differences between “blacks” and non-blacks have to be ascribed to non-genetic causes. You and other posters have done an admirable job IMO of explaining this and suggesting such non-genetic causes.
So I hope it cheers you up a little to know that at least you’ve eradicated a bit of my ignorance, but it seems to me that on this point astorian’s ignorance is deliberately ineradicable. For some reason s/he wants to think that “blacks” are genetically programmed to dominate sports, and little things like evidence, logic, and rational argument aren’t going to shake that opinion. If you want to keep trying, more power to you, but I hate to see you sweating over this in vain.
I’d rather siphon off some of your effort to respond to something I still don’t think I quite understand in your arguments. Blacks are not genetically unique—okay, got it. Yet there are some “black” physical characteristics that are obviously heritable, such as skin/hair/eye color, facial morphology, hair type, etc. From a naive viewpoint, it’s as though you can identify a physical state called “blackness” (or “negritude”, as the old racial classifiers used to call it) in variously diluted forms in people with various levels of “black” heritage. Could you tell me
why this is different from genetic uniqueness (I didn’t quite follow the distinction between genes for a trait and expression of a trait)? and
what evidence we would need to see in order to be justified in believing that yes, sports ability is part of the general “negritude” package, so that overall we could legitimately expect people who had other “black” traits to be superior in certain measurable physical abilities? In other words, what would it take for astorian to be right?
(By the way, Charles Dickens in the Pickwick Papers mentions a cat who ate some cheese and waited at a mousehole “with baited breath”, so your goof has a very respectable ancestry. :))
However, I don’t think your argument ever ruled out the possibility that some small subset of what we call “black” does in fact have some “athletic superiority”. Whether that is the case or not is uncertain at best, but it sounds like it is not impossible. Is this true?
Of course, you clearly show that saying blacks are better runners is no more true than saying blacks are worse runners, simply because of the huge diversity of the “group”.
Actually, they DO! Do the names Venus and Serena ring any bells? >> Asty
I certainly have heard of the Williams sisters. what percentage of number one ranked tennis players over the last ten years have been black?
<< However, I concede one small point: black athletes don’t dominate tennis or cycling the way they do many other sports. >>
Based on your answers, or lack thereof, I would say you concede a good deal more than that.
< MONEY is the main reason. For the most part, if you want to become a great golfer, tennis player, simmer or cyclist, it helps immensely to grow up in a rich family that belongs to a country club. Yes, you CAN learn tennis on public courts in city parks (as the Williams sisters and Arthur Ashe did), you CAN learn to play golf on municipal courses (as Lee Trevino did), etc., and you CAN learn to swim at public pools. But it’s hard to become a champion without personalized instruction from a qualified pro. >>
So culture plays a big factor, after all. What role do you think the appearance of better jobs than getting punched in the face have in the disappearance of Irish and Italian heavyweight boxing champions?
> All in all, it’s probably miraculous that there have been as many Venuses, Serenas, Ashes, and Trevinos as there have been. >>
Why aren’t there more black kickers, since you assert black men can move their legs faster and harder than white men? Why aren’t there more white MC’s? Do white people lack the genes for improvising rythymically rhymed poetry and hooking up fat ass beats?
<<If and when black Americans become as affluent as white Americans, we’ll see them dominate tennis and cycling, too. >>
And probably most other things, except boxing. As had been pointed out, Jews once domninated basketball, and this was widely associated with the native shiftyness of the Semitic mind (see “Taboo”) Goodness, what if the stereotypes about Jews become associated with blacks? “Blacks control Hollywood!” “He Blacked me down.”
Anyone have any ideas on how assimilated Italian-Americans do in Italian or English, compared to the population at large or any other ethnic background?
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. Darn it, damned idioms get me every time. Must do penance. >> Colloun, Callais
hey, doesn’t make you a bad person, and now you know. I’m sure soon I will get something wrong, and you can hip me to the triple truth, Ruth. It’s almost like having two brains, you know?
Thanks. A few years back before I began to get into this I was in no different a place. But the data says what it says. So, like the critical thinker I try to be, I had to reexamine what I saw. It helps to have a sense, of course, about selection bias --the tendency to remember and select belief confirming data over non-confirming data in ordinary life. So, I went through this process. Not comfortable to realize some closely held ideas are not well-supported but hey…
Absolutely. Absolutely. I am annoyed at folks like a certain mipsman and astorian deliberately remaining ignorant, but then the creation science folks get me steamed too.
Exactely, with a stress on present state – albiet with the recognition that in fact the door is closing on uniqueness. Accumulating data tells us more and more the old fashioned ideas don’t work well.
Thanks very much. It ain’t easy breaking this stuff out.
**
Yeah, for a while back I was a real fighter in the usenet groups on this topic. Stomach churning the crap people post. I was really taken aback by the aggressive ignorance.
Well, there’s no question those physical characteristics are genetically determined and heritable. Rather, the question is whether they are diagnostic of common heritage and the degree to which you can use them to define the boundaries of a population.
Perhaps the easiest illustration is to start with the “Negrito” populations of South East Asia – the populations I mentioned earlier in re Taboo being falsely attributed to close African ancestry. They have surface morphologies which, well, are just like our vision of “black Africans” – same noses, same eyes, same hair, same skin color etc. Yet we find through population genetics that in fact they are most closely related to who? Well the neighboring Asian populations with more “classic” Asian features. And in fact they’re about as far as one can get from aggregate, say West Africans. Now such distances are relative and subject to the caveat that human genetic variations do not map roughly 90% of the time on regional differences.
A bit dodgy this comparision, but suffice it to say that they probably are among the populations with the least post-Africa exit African gene flow. The Aborigines of Australia of course would be the winners in this category. Our Taboo author mistakenly thought they were closer on what basis? Surface morphology and skeletal morphology. The same methods which would lead our posters and more ignorant forensics people astray on their ancestry. I recall reading an article years ago on paleoanthropological research in North and West – even 50000 years ago skeletal features varied through from ‘classic Negroid’ to ‘Caucasoid’ – this in areas supposed to be “black.” The author, after a few articles, concluded the designations were worthless, didn’t say very much about the ancestry etc. Same thing for Kennewick man. All that to say none of these ambiguities are due to recent mixing. Noip, its ancient as we are.
This example, and it certainly is not the sole one, but is striking. Basically, no one population group has a monopoly on these traits, and even within sub-Saharan Africans, there is great variation among the traits. Only over-generalization leads us to think that everyone has precisely the same hair or the same skin in A. There is in fact immense variation with quite different traits expressed.
Now it probably is no surprise to you that almost all of sub-Saharan Africa is at least tropical and has high insolation (effective incoming sun). The same environmental effects that have independantly produced dark skins and various Africanesque features in places such as south India, south Asia etc. produced similar effects in Africa, despite a lack of underlying homogeniety (other than our general human homogeniety – which arises from an ancient ‘constriction event’ – something in a relatively recent past but before human exit from Africa knocked our numbers down to a weeeny level which is what produced our general homogeniety. Not as bad as Cheetahs who are virtual clones of each other, but pretty homogenous as comprared to other mammals and even our near cousins.)
In case my explanation is not clear (I’m not famous for clarity, come to think I’m not famous period… damn) I think this site does a nice job of dealing with this stuff.
Okay, there’s two different questions here. I think I answered the first above. The second is about expression. Lots of genetic traits express differently according to the environment (in the broadest sense.) Height is the most obvious, your diet (as a child of course), your parents diet etc. has a profound on your height. Genes set the basic parameters, but there can be (sometimes) immense variation within those parameters depending on everything from womb environment to post-birth environment. Don’t get the right input maybe you’re stunted. Japan is now registering measurable increases in average hieght due to diet changes – which are incomplete! An important part of the population is adopting more western diets, which is producing larger folks.
Now skin color doesn’t really fall into this, nor do many of the grosser morphological features, but many attributes which folks want to attribute to some diffuse group defined by nothing but skin color and some facial features certainly do. Its the old fallacy of composition, which as humans we’re very prone to. That’s in our genes! Useful trait, helps us process data, but often leads to erroneous conclusions for group traits etc.
Well, we need to control for environment. A’s blithe dismissal of environment is just political. Of course its also helpful to OBJECTIVELY defien what sports ability(ies) really is. When I say objectively, I mean under controlled circumstances, testing to see that selection bias is not warping our views etc. Sorry but no matter how many sports programs there are, I frankly don’t think they have a scientific approach. My bias perhaps given my limited knowledge, but I have never seen much evidence of the scientific method properly speaking.
But after that we need to have some identifiable pattern of traits (genetically pinned down, not ‘observed’ through ‘common sense.’ That’s the kind of science that led the medievals to talk about spontaneous generation of maggots.) among the guys who are doing the winning. And of course we’d need to find that those traits are demonstrably more common among folks who happen to have dark skin. Defining the group is key. If we can’t then we don’t have much.
If we can’t demonstate that a certain package of alleles are more common to group X then we don’t have a genetic basis to go on. (Note, I say more common. Since we already know that there are no alleles which occur only in say Group X (black Africans say) and not Group Y, we know that these questions have to be in terms of distribution. The weak point for this is of course that group vs individual variation is weak – we’re more likely to vary by individual than by group. That’s what all the data says.)
Possible? Sure, although it strains credulity. Now, as I said it’s perfectly reasonable to posit some definable group --like the population which the Kenyan runners come from-- have a real difference. That makes perfect sense, hell it even strikes me as likely, although again this is in conjunction with environment. ( I think that this answers PQ’s Q. I do think that Black Americans as part of that package makes no f’ing sense, they just don’t form a coherent pop. Now of course that doesn’t exclude sub-pops, but then the same goes for ‘whites’)**
Maybe you do have some traits (alleles) which give you maybe a slight edge in cardiovascular efficiency, as well as muscular strength or whatnot. You also need the right environment, else you can easily end up stunted. When I say environment I mean the whole package, your own self, the food, society even…
(**: as such we could hypothesize that there are definable ‘European’ sub-groups with superior physical skills relative to some defined activity/sport but for social reasons they just don’t put the effort and so this doesn’t show up… Make sense? All goes to show the dangers of over-generalization and taking a current snap shot of society as determining the range of human ability.)
I’ve a sense that many of those objecting seem to feel there is a political agenda to this all – recognition of environment. Of course some folks make a political agenda – overstating environment, not wanting to recog. the genes. Others go the opposite way. A balanced view is needed. Political labels aren’t too helpful. Like I said earlier, recognizing environement and subjective social factors are determinate in many fields does not determined a point of view.
Oh for shame. I wish I could claim reading Dickens was the reason, but darn it, I never read the Pickwick Papers.
PS: Crimson Hipster Dude: you the man. I should achieve such clarity.
PPS: Mipsman, do you really think this is about Marxism or PC or whatever labels you want to throw out? Or do you wanna pony up to the science?
I just thought of adding this clarification in re to the surface morphologies issue.
Something which population genetics teaches us, and helped lead to the current domination of the Out of Africa theory of human origins is the finding that all human variation is a subset of African variation. If you consider this, you begin to understand some concepts. Essentially all aspects of human morphologies found outside of Africa are also found in Africa --albeit not expressed as strongly and not all in one package. Some aspects of course may be recessive traits rarely expressed etc, but they’re there.
As my prior post suggested, even ‘white’ features and morphologies turn up in widely spaced locations in both modern and ancient times. Back before we understood the genetics lots of people had recourse to ancient invasions, migrations of white folks etc. Now it seems rather more likely that what we see in the archaelogical record and even into modern times is simply the great complexity of our origins (of course there’s migrations and all that too).
I now admit that Collounsbury has convinced me also. I now believe that ‘blacks’ are not enough of a genetically homogeneous group to make any blanket statements about their specific level of athleticism in any particular sports.
However, while I was sitting on the toilet today, I realized that nothing that we have argued about has been mutually exclusive. The posters on this board have suggested that: “People of African ancestry are better at athletic events such as running”. My scientific mind also agrees that this is impossible because ‘blacks’ are probably the most genetically diverse ‘race’ on the planet. Yet, we see ‘blacks’ win track and field events time after time.
We can rectify this by turning the argument 180 degrees. The statement now becomes not: “Why are blacks better runners?” but instead "Why are Whites and Asians inferior runners?” The difference between these two statements is subtle on the surface but can have profound significance scientifically and logically.
Here is my new theory:
All Homo sapiens developed in Africa within the last two million years. Therefore, all humans originated in Africa and migrated throughout the world from there.
Because human development from 2 million years ago to 100,000 years ago occurred in Africa, the vast majority of human genetic diversity developed in Africa and are still present in people of African descent. This makes Africans the most genetically diverse group of people in the world.
All other populations of humans migrated away from Africa only during the last 100,000 years or less. The founders of these groups were probably very small in number. We can imagine a very small founding group crossing into Europe and founding a small population of humans there. Other groups may have joined the founding population later but this still represents a genetic bottleneck. The relatively small number of founding members limited the diversity of genes present in the new population. Maybe whites are simply a bunch of relatively genetically homogeneous people whose ancesters happened to be the worst runners on the block.
Populations of primarily African descent (e.g. slaves in America) have recently had a large infusion of genes from other populations because of interbreeding but the reverse is not nearly as true.
It does not matter that some whites or Asians are faster than some blacks. This was never the debate. What matters is that the best white and Asian runners cannot beat the best African runners (from whichever population they come).
Some blacks are faster than all whites and Asians because the same genetic diversity does not exist among whites and Asians as it does among African blacks. Some people of African descent have inherited genes that allow them to run faster than any whites or Europeans due to this bottleneck. The same genes are very rare or non-existent in white or Asian populations.
Firstly Coll, I’ve spent what time I could reviewing both cites and the thread from the summer: ‘Differences between Humans’ and want to thank you for your contribution to fighting ignorance - mine included. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the recent works on genetics - much has emerged in recent times and I am grateful for your contribution on the board I hope I grasped some of what’s happened.
Also, you have been brought to task - by quite a few, it seems - for what might be seen as an abrasive style of posting. However, I think you might have changed a few minds and as that is like pulling teeth perhaps the abrasiveness was necessary to challenge some hard preconceptions. I mention the latter only as a further acknowledgement of a job well done. So, well done for your forbearance and input!
I still have a few problems, though (4 quick questions and a more bothersome one to finish):
You say (somewhere here) that Harris &Hey’s (1999) detection of a fixed nucleotide difference was debunked in the 4-authored paper from Harvard. I may have missed the subtlety because I didn’t quite see that.
The Genome project is pinning down functionality and loci but do these, de facto, have to be discrete from potential better athletic performance ?
Also (and this might be a question of language), all the literature uses the term ‘homogeneity’. To my mind and in this context, this implicitly presupposes that the prior state was non-homogenous. Could you clarify why this particular terminology is used ?
As an aside, current thinking now seems to be that there was no crossbreeding between HS (H s s) and Neanderthals (“not conclusive but highly suggestive”). Do you hold a view on whether crossbreeding was potentially feasible and what ultimately happened to the Neanderthals ?
So (and back to the OP), I am left with accepting HS biogenetic homogeneity - both on a micro and macro population scale - excludes the possibility of genetic variations (within known science and accepting current understanding on both population movement and mutation). That’s probably fine because we now seem (in the past 10 years ?) to have come a considerable way in understanding our route out of Africa.
However, Kenyan athletic performance is a fact. Actually, that is not what I mean, let me try this: People who inhabit that particular region habitually outperform people from all other socio-geographic locations in longer distance running. Your view is that performance is solely a product of post birth environmental conditioning and is population specific. And that view is the result of biogenetic science. My instinct (not terribly substantial, I know) tells me this is not a particularly persuasive alternative given the very distinct performance (the Kenyan Highlands aren’t a whole lot higher than Colorado). How do you, personally, feel about accepting the environmental alternative ?
Also, when you look at the inability of European type men to run the 100 under 10 seconds, at the percentage of men of West African origin vs. whites (in western societies where poor whites out number poor blacks in pure numerical terms) in explosive, reaction orientated sports, do you feel happy that there is not something we haven’t yet identified, something not biogenetic but more than post birth environmental, that influences performance ?
I’m very glad, and I’m also glad you put up with my impatience and occasional rudeness. Frustration speaking.
**
Note: you’re still treating “blacks”, whites etc. as valid units of analysis for these purposes. This is going to create numerous problems through fallacies of composition, both from the ‘black’ side and the extra-African side. We know from the data that we need to look at (much) smaller groupings in order to generalize from a firm basis. Trying to force the generalization at this level requires abandoning the data.
Yes, although Homo emerges more recently than 2 million. Out of Africa exit for homo is posited somewhere in the 100000 years before present range. Note, don’t confuse this with the constriction event which produced homo, which is posited to have lasted about 100000, but occurs earlier. People mix up the numbers
There is of course some who still argue a modified Multi-Regional origins theory (Wolpoff et al) but their model is becoming harder and harder to support (or very complex) as the genetic data comes in. A parsimonious explanation supports Out of Africa (remember as a process)
Yes, but I can see you’re neglecting that most of our diversity does not map unto regionally defined populations. You’re still setting up Africans as a discrete group (which makes some sense at a macro-level for defining population movements, Africa to exo-Africa) but doesn’t make sense for this question because of what we’ve already observed about the distribution of variation.
Sorry, you lead yourself astray here. There would be a bottle neck if there was breeding isolation. There clearly was not, as amply demonstrated by the fact there are no sharp clines between African and extra-African allelic distributions. Neither time nor human mating patterns allowed for a constriction. Out of Africa was a process with constant back flows and re-out flows. And of cours right up to historical times, there were population flows.
Let me try to do a review of this.
As noted, molecular and morphological data strongly support the theory our species emerged in Africa from a stem population, a bud off of a larger group. Several specialists argue that the depth of unique diversity in individuals place the site of origin somewhere between the Congo basin area and Cape of Good Hope. I’m not so sure about this analysis.
The time frames for emergence out of Africa have been beated up and down recently. The favored account is a recent emmergence with expansion from africa most likely after 100000 years before present (ybp). African expansion appears to have begun between 120000 ybp and 170000 ybp. Some of the recent Y chromosomal studies put it at 140000 ybp. Our homogeniety suggests that the ‘constriction’ lasted more than 100000 years, it occurs in the range of 250000 to 150000 ybp, meaning it’s possible the human population rapidly exited Africa after the constriction event. Where did they come from? We appear to emerge from homo heidelbergensis which is also the species parental to species Homo neandertalensis. One line of molecular evidence suggests that humans and neandertals diverged 450000 to 650000 ybp, which is supported by morphological evidence.
Now returning to the question at hand. All this of course also begs the question of whether “whites” and “Asians” and others form a population homogenous enough set apart from blacks. Your reversal of the equation does not rescue the hypothesis from the main observation, that variation does not map unto this level of population differentiation, that is on these macro races. It’s historically and genetically unsupported.
Once more, in order to understand this, you have to discard the idea of white, black, Asian etc. It’s simply not descriptive of us genetically. sub-populations should be better but we don’t have good enough resolution to know.
Not true, if there was this sharp differentiation we would expect to see it in sharp Africa-vs-Out of Africa allelic differences. To repeat, these do not exist. That, there is perfect confidence. It is quite clear there were never effective formal barriers between populations at this level. There was always substantial gene flow.
Sigh, can’t you see that you’ve backed yourself into the same corner as before. Semantically you’ve reversed the equation but begged the question. You’re simply reifying white and Asian as genetic units discrete from a now admitted multi-unit “black” But, as noted this does not rescue this level of analysis from the patterns of variation already noted.
Maybe I can make it more clear by observing that what 6% of variation by region means–depending on methods used-- is that you are more likely to be more different at an aggregate level from another fellow ‘whitey’ as from an African. I know its a bit wierd to think of, but its the way the genes crumbled.
Ahhh, okay. I feel like I am going in circles, but here we might be closer to a possible truth, or partial truth. First, note that your phrase ‘bottle neck’ is not applicable to the Out of Africa event as explained above.
We again have the issue that while we might be able to explain a subset of some African descended achievement through a slightly higher incidence of an advantageous allelic package (I say package since it seems likely to require such), we should see precisely the same effects among non-African groups who will happen to display the same. And of course, this still begs the environment question which I hope I explained well-enough previously.
And I’m glad that you took the time – better sources than me!
I am sincerely sorry about the rudeness. I do get ticked off about this, as some folks just can’t update.
**
Ouch, well, I’ll have to reread. It’s been a while. The gist of the Harris & Hays critiques is that their sampling was defective. They did not have a valid sample of African diversity, and oversampled Europeans vs others. I locate this in the Wolpoff MREH vs OoA broohaha. Harris is a Wolpoffian and they’re trying to scare up support for MREH. The issue with their sample – and come to think of it the Harvard paper may not have hit this head one – was they neglected to sample several key sub-Saharan African populations known to be transitional, and they also neglected if I recall correctly sampling of some South Asian populations. This is not nit-picking, its crucial to their conclusions.
It’ll be a little while before this is sorted out.
The Genome project has done nothing per se with functionality, not its purpose. Purely creating a guidebook to where stuff is at, but does not answer diversity questions because it is a restricted sample (some few North Americas). Nothing wrong with that per se, but HGP doesn’t tell us anything about the total range of alleles, only about where genes are placed (which is not trivial!). Some folks have begun work with the project to investigate functionality, but that’s seperate. Of course some allelic packages will definately have an effect on athletic performance, in conjuction with environment. Then you have to look at where and how they are distributed. This is going to come years down the pike.
AKA diversity etc. My prior post covers this to an extent. We’re talking about the degree of variation in the species. Several hundred thousand years ago (250 to 150) something happened to knock our population down to a population of maybe a few thousand at most. What? Nobody knows. Need more spade work to know. In any case, with a population constriction like that (it might have been isolation of some kind, again who knows) you lose a lot of diversity. Think inbreeding. Whatever it was it knocked out most of our variation, as compared with our near cousins, Chimps, Gorillas etc.
We have several sample of Neandertal dna which indicate it is highly divergent from our own, modern dna. While the samples are widely spaced in geography and time, we need more to draw firm conclusions. However, coupled with the lack of evidence for cross-breeds (with the possible exception of one child in Portugal, but that’s controversial per the ID) it seems that for some reason cross breeding did not occur or if it did it did not have successful offspring which show up in the archaeological record. That leaves a lot of ground. Maybe there was a formal speciation barrier, that Neander and Homo S were simply not interfertile. Maybe there were birthing problems. Maybe they could produce mules (sterile offspring), maybe they could have reproducing offspring but they were not fit and thus selected out.
Nobody knows right now.
Yeah, I think the past ten or fifteen years has really refined our understanding. Mind you this does not exclude genetic variation, it only means that our variation does not really occur at this macro macro level. Small populations certainly can have some outlying traits, but not likely to be too outlying – and of course our modern world is rapidly wiping that out.
Let me be clear, I am not an extreme environmentalist in this subject. I accept that this Kenyan population might have some allelic package, a higher incidence of an advantageous congruence of several alleles, which gives them a bit of an edge. I doubt its that much, but combined with the right environmental factors, from birth environment through to larger society, can lead to outstanding performance.
That, however, does not allow the conclusion that these Kenyans are therefore better than everyone based on their genes. Maybe, but its more likely that its a complex conguence of some good genetic heritage --maybe really outstanding maybe just slightly-- and good environment, relatively speaking.
Regarding the persuasiveness, and the comparision with Colorodo. We would have to answer emprically the relative effort placed by Coloradans of long residence (a bit of a problem in mobile USA) with Kenyans. I’m not sure why its so hard to accept that different socio-economic circumstances will cause very different allocation of efforts.
Let’s take chimps. We know that chimps have different cultures now. Some bands have different culturally based practices, such as fishing for ants, washing fruit in a certain way. Now, leaving aside chimps higher genetic diversity, do we need to jump on genetic differences when examining reasons why some bands seem quite good at ant fishing and others do not? A reasonable balance is needed.
What’s ‘West African’ origin? What’s inability? What is our evidence of inability? Do we control for other factors? We have a small sample over a short time period. If I went back 30 or 40 years, the same methadology would lead me to widely different conclusions. Frankly, its far to subject to bias at a number of different levels. Only objective, controlled research can teach us anything.
Now, I already dealt with the West African category which just is nonesensical on the genetic level except as a cultural category– and also the issue of heritage. American whites, some --well I’ve forgotten the percentage so I’ll through out 20% just for discussion – I think its within reason, have near African heritage. Why don’t we see them as standouts? The Americas case just is not very well explained by genetics.
Poverty is not the sole feature of the sociological explanation, rather the subjective --perhaps wrong-- feeling of a sub-group that their achievement is best channeled through a select sub-set of performance. Given the genetic heritage of the Americas, few other explanations make any sense at all. I have long suspected that many are uncomfortable with this as it might seem to be an indictment of our society. Perhaps, to an extant we all know that the history of racial relations is unpleasant. However, in this context the sociological view is simply the best coherent explanation and does not necessarily lead to the conlcusion that say that sub-set of Black Americans who concentrate in sports are right to do so.
Now a good test for all this is to examine trends over time (The hypothesis does need to be tested! Rigoursly, not by ad hoc observation.) Will, as the hangover of segregation fades, we continue to see the same patterns. We need studies controlling for socio-economic progress to see if there are impacts from this (e.g. on the model of the disappearance of the Irish boxer as other avenues open up.) Emperical tests which pay attention to bias --selection bias above all-- are the sole answer.
Well, I want to thank everyone who’s grappled with this issue in an honest way. There’s a lot of unanswered issues out there, and of course I have my point of view. I hope that those who have followed up on the lit I’ve cited have found my presentation reasonable and not unduly biased.
My position can best be summed up, in re these questions of race, as race is a huge impediment to a scientific understanding of humanity. We need to lose it as a conceptual category in order to move forward.
As someone who has come to this thread late, let me suggest the book
“Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond.
It does an excellent job of explaining why specific human populations have tended to develop certain characteristics, all of which have VERY little to do with any genetic differences.
I soooo agree with what your saying. Hence, based on your observations, it’s just commen sense that a black man will never become a Chess champion, or win a million bucks on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
Using your logic, whites are smarter than blacks. End of thread.
YOU SHOW CASUAL OBSERVANCE OF RESULTS AS PROOF OF ATHLETICISM, THEN I’LL SHOW IT AS PROOF OF INTELLIGENCE.
Everybody knows whites are smarter than blacks, it’s commen sense. We must PCedness aside on this subject too.
Whites are smarter than blacks. That’s my theory based on the observation techniques of Astorian and others…
I soooo agree with what your saying. Hence, based on your observations, it’s just commen sense that a black man will never become a Chess champion, or win a million bucks on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
Whites are smarter than blacks. That’s my theory based on the observation techniques of Astorian and others…