Nothing worse than a man with inadequately pretty ears.
D’oh! “Pretty obvious inadequacy issues”
Something like 40-100,000+ years of separation exist between populations in west africa which are the recent ancestors of most US blacks (on average, about 80% of their genetic pool) and the european (or asian) populations which are the recent ancestors of US whites and asians (on average about 95%+ of their genetic pool).
Additionally, most of the out-of-africa eurasian populations show introgression of a substantially more archaic line (Neandertal) which goes back a further half million years or so.
The Creationist construct against which I am contrasting that data is that evolution has a trivial impact on genes, and that modern human populations are trivially distinct from one another because evolution doesn’t really happen at a macro level and in any case we all sprang up about 5,000 years ago.
Evolution does not consider “superiority” or “inferiority” except for successful reproduction. Nature does not think of a gnat as inferior to a chimpanzee; it does not think of a bonobo as superior to a rhesus macaque. It just flings nucleotide combinations around and sees what reproduces successfully in that locale.
The idea that modern average differences among populations whose source genetic pools reflect average differences of tens of thousands of years (hundreds of thousands, for Neandertal genes) of separation is an article of faith, and much closer to the Creationist construct than what evolutionary biology shows us for any other animal group with so long a separation period.
When we begin to parse out the gene variants and gene frequencies which might drive phenotypic differences, we do not find ourselves heading in a direction that suggests everyone has about the same distribution for the gene variants which seem to affect performance and outcomes. Instead, we find markedly different distributions, and we find (see my cite from Wang, above) that those differences have been driven by Darwinian selection. This is not very reassuring for the genetic egalitarian crowd, even though precise mechanisms are not worked out against precise gene variants.
For example, if we look at gene variants which affect muscle, we will find average differences in ACTN3 R577X homozygosity between elite athletes for power sprinting, and everyone else. Then, if we look at distribution of that homozygosity by self-identified race group, we find a difference in frequency.
This doesn’t mean we have identified the exact gene variants that make Olympic sprinting photos look like this. It doesn’t mean nurture does not play a part in outcomes along with nature.
But it is powerful evidence that, when we self-identify into groups that in turn reflect source populations with average separations of tens–hundreds–of thousands of years, it would appear evolution applies as equally to human groups as it does all other life. It does not seem likely that genes which drive functions we may value highly in our culture (neurophysiology or athletic ability) have somehow been exempted, and to date there is nothing to suggest those differences are “trivial.” If they were, we might argue that the Inuit will soon be replacing west africans in the NBA as soon as their culture catches up to what we value.
I don’t think so. Evolution diverges, even when we want to unite.
And yet the most recent common ancestor of all living humans is much, much more recent than this. Further, there are populations within Africa which are more separated in ancestry than some of these populations are to groups outside of Africa, which makes perfect sense – Somalis are closer to Yemenis than to Namibians; Senegalese are closer to Mauritanians and some Moroccan groups than to Tanzanians; and the like.
So you’re arguing against no one in this thread or any of the other threads on this subject. You’re just the straw man conqueror, ruling all straw men with an iron fist and casting them down at your pleasure. Hail to you, slayer of straw men. Hay people tremble at your very approach.
For the millionth time, I am arguing that there’s no reason to believe that culture is not as strongly involved in various group differences now than in the past – life outcome differences between black people and white people 200 years ago were due to the incredibly different ways that culture and society treated them. The outcome differences are far less stark now, but still exist, and I continue to assert that culture and society treats black people and white people very differently, and this is just as likely to be responsible for outcome differences (including test score differences) as it was in the past, regardless of income and parental education. Things really are different for black people, on average – even rich black people. I don’t buy that there is something special about now that leads to the conclusion that outcomes in education, crime, economics, etc., are somehow perfectly reflective of some genetic hierarchy, while outcomes through the past never were. There’s nothing special about now, and until we actually know all of the genes responsible for intelligence, and the prevalence of these genes in various populations, then your hypothesis remains just that – a hypothesis.
As long as you lump me in with your Creationist straw men, I will strongly consider lumping you in with your compatriots in the “blacks-have-inherent-genetic-intellectual-inferiority” assertion crowd – white supremacists. Cockroach metaphors will go over very well with that crowd, I can assure you.
Cockroach?
My only point about Creationism’s antipathy toward evolution was just made above, and I don’t think assorted slurs about white supremacists add much to a debate. When we are talking about Nature, she doesn’t see cockroaches as inferior to, say, Creationists. 
She just goes on her merry way, blissfully unaware of silly labels. While it may feel noble to promulgate egalitarianism for genetically driven abilities, Nature could not care less, and that has never been her goal. Her only goal is successful reproduction within the ecological niche of a local population.
Anyway, just to help you out a bit with most common ancestor…I think you are getting confused again about the difference between an individual who might be in an ancestral chain, and a common ancestor for all the genetic material found in a descendant group.
The common ancestor for the genetic material which is currently present in the human race would go back several hundred thousand years or more, because most modern eurasians had introgression of Neandertal genes. The Neandertal line antedates the anatomically modern human line that started in africa by a half million years or so.
There is another way to think of most common recent ancestor, and that is to consider an individual who might be in a grandparent-type ancestral tree. However that kind of common ancestor says nothing about genetic ancestry, which is what matters when we are talking about genetic pools.
I am not following your notion of who is more related to whom, and how that fits in…
What I can tell you is what I said earlier: the west african recent ancestor gene pool that makes up about 80% of american blacks has been separated from the european gene pool which makes up 95%+ of american whites by about 40-100,000+ years.
Try this image(this time using mtDNA tracers), for a diagrammatic clarification that may help you.
These migration patterns reflect broad group averages. But of course, with so coarse a group as self-identified race, that’s exactly what we are talking about: broad group averages.
Think of it this way:
By self-identifying as an american black, the chances that any given gene variant I have reflect west african gene variants from 300 years ago are much higher than the chances a given gene variant I have is from a european line. And the reverse if I self-identify as white.
Those gene variants have in turn been driven by 40-100,000+ years of separate evolution (depending on where you put the division point, which in that case would be well before the L3/M-N split at out of africa…).
They add as much or more to this debate than any references to creationists. White supremacist dopers have made the same arguments you have about the inferiority of black people in inherent genetic intelligence. I’m unaware of any creationists making the same argument that I have (which, I hope, but doubt that you understand even after all these discussions, has nothing to do with your “egalitarian” fantasy straw-man).
I take it you’re incapable of reading my posts, then, because you continue to use this egalitarian straw man crap no matter what I post.
Huh? You’re saying that there existed a single ancestor with all the present-day genetic diversity of the entire world in his/her gene pool? That sounds ludicrous.
That if Somalians, on average, are more closely genetically related to Yemenis, on average, then to Namibians, then it cannot be said logically that sub-Saharan Africans are a separate group from Eurasians in terms of genetic relationships.
This doesn’t have much to do with my broader point, though, which is about the ridiculousness of making claims about the genes for intelligence in various groups without knowing what these genes are, or their relative prevalence, because of the significant biases and prejudices that still exist in our society and culture. As long as such biases and prejudices are significant, differences in outcomes don’t and can’t provide any information at all about genes or genetic potential.
I feel like we’re making progress…it may sound ludicrous, but then evolution sounds ludicrous to a lot of people.
Let’s start with ancestral genetic pools.
Genes evolve, so the genetic pool of a given modern population is never a pool of the exact same variants an ancestor had. However the genes of an individual can be traced to a common ancestral pool where those gene variants started. Go back far enough, and you’ll get to an ancestor (really, an ancestral group) from which all the gene variants in the individual descended.
For the genetic makeup of a typical modern San (for example), you may have to go back a couple hundred thousand years to get to the earliest anatomically modern human–an L0 somewhere around east africa. Only a very tiny (interesting, but tiny) proportion of his genetic pool would be outside of (recent) sub-saharan african sources.
Now hop over to a typical eurasian. with Neandertal or Denisovan admixture. For 96-99% of his genetic makeup, you can go back to the same genetic ancestry 200,000 years ago in east africa, but to get all the way to rest of his genetic pool ancestry(actually, “her” in this diagram), you have to go back a half million years to pick up the Neandertal contribution, and perhaps a million years if he’s got Denisovan introgression. When you get to Mom and Dad standing on that far left line, what you have is the genetic ancestor that contributed all the parent genes, the descendant variants of which compose the genetic makeup of that individual.
As to Somalis…I recommend additional reading on human migration into and out of the Levant. Many modern populations on the horn of africahave heavy genetic contributions from relatively recent (past few thousand years, and perhaps some as long as 20K years ago) back migration into the horn of africa.
However you should not let this confuse you into thinking that the distribution of those genetic variants somehow diffused throughout the rest of sub-saharan africa such that it’s nonsensical to talk about “sub-saharan” africa as a group, or “non-africa” as a group. You’ll see genetic biologists use that language all the time. You should also not get confused that the west african recent ancestry (300 years ago in west africa) for 80% of the genetic pool of US blacks has much to do with genetic goings-on over in the horn of africa. The separation of those west african groups 300 years ago from modern eurasion lines is much more substantial than is the separation for groups in the horn of africa–it’s closer to the 40-100K+ timeframe I have mentioned above.
From the above, e.g.:
“These analyses suggested that there might be distinct, differentiated African and non-African ancestries in the HOA. After partitioning the SNP data into African and non-African origin chromosome segments, we found support for a distinct African (Ethiopic) ancestry and a distinct non-African (Ethio-Somali) ancestry in HOA populations. The African Ethiopic ancestry is tightly restricted to HOA populations and likely represents an autochthonous HOA population. The non-African ancestry in the HOA, which is primarily attributed to a novel Ethio-Somali inferred ancestry component, is significantly differentiated from all neighboring non-African ancestries in North Africa, the Levant, and Arabia.”
I’m enjoying reading this discussion, folks, and don’t mean to hijack…
But I’m really wondering if Omar Little, Terr, and D’Anconia would like to revisit this thread now that it is clear that Shaun King was victim of a scurrilous smear campaign by an admitted liar and troll.
I’ve been hoping they might. But they seem notably absent.
Bolding mine – if you had said “ancestral group”, it wouldn’t have sounded ludicrous. No, it’s not ludicrous at all that a group in the past might contain a whole bunch of genetic diversity.
I’ve snipped the rest because it doesn’t conflict with anything I’ve said. Your data confirms that there are indeed many populations of sub-Saharan Africans that happen to be more closely genetically related to certain non-SSA populations than they are to various other SSA populations – like the Somalis (and probably Ethiopians, Eritreans, and other nearby groups) are more closely related to Egyptians and Yemenis than to Namibians, and Senegalese who are probably more closely related, on average, to various groups of Mauritanians and Moroccans (and perhaps Spanish and Portugese) than to some groups of Mozambicans.
And, from my reading, this has been true throughout relatively recent human history – 12th century Somalians were more closely related to Arabian peninsula dwellers than to 12th century Namibians, and 12th century Senegalese were more closely related to North Africans (and probably other Mediterranean people) than to contemporary Mozambicans.
If you think I’m wrong here, then show me which statements are wrong, and show me that (for example) all Senegalese groups are closer to Mozambicans than to Mauritanians, and that Ethiopians are closer to Namibians than to Arabs, and Sudanese are closer to South Africans than to Egyptians, etc.
For fuck’s sake, can we take the genetics somewhere else? This thread is obviously about subjective racial identification.
Preferably another board?
Sorry! There’s certain types of nonsense I can’t help myself from challenging.
snerk
All African people are closer related to other Africans than people from another racial group. Same for Whites, Asians, Native Americans, and Austronesians. Your sources on this issue have been noticeably lacking.
This is completely (and laughably) false. Your link has nothing to do with what I said – there isn’t a single African population, there are hundreds, so comparing people within a single population is irrelevant. And you totally ignored my link. Here it is again. As you can see, (just as an example – there are many), the Yoruba are closer to all Eurasian populations than to the Biaka, or the Kikuyu – all three are sub-Saharan African groups.
Do you really, honestly believe that Somalians are closer to Namibians than to Yemenis? Or that Senegalese are closer to Mozambicans than to Moroccans? Hint: 19th century racial “science” is a total crock. Neighboring and nearby populations, whatever their sociological racial classification, are far more likely to be closely related to each other than distant populations, even when they are in the same racial group.
Not true. The authors of the source I linked to treated all Africans as one population group and determined that they are all more similar to each other than they are to other populations. Your criticism essentially amounts to “I’ve determined a priori that racial groups are invalid, so any analysis that uses racial groups must be laughable and false, even if the analysis shows the biological reality of race.” And again, genetic grouping of humans results in either the traditional racial groups classification or the traditional classification with Austronesians split into aboriginals and Oceanians.
Your source is fallacious become you’re trying to use a phylogenetic tree to determine genetic distance, when phylogenetic trees only determine ancestry. The source I listed makes an explicit claim about exactly the topic we’re discussing. Your source doesn’t even mention genetic distance at all, your claims about it are an abstraction made by yourself, and the authors were focused on determining the ancestry of an “unknown hominin from southern Siberia”. It’s comically irrelevant.
No they didn’t – your own source reported that substantial overlap was revealed depending on how many loci were used, and when geographically intermediate and “mixed” populations (which would definitely include groups in Africa and Asia) were looked at.
Further, it’s utterly ridiculous and entirely arbitrary to treat all Africans as one population group. Africa, sub-Saharan or not, was never isolated from Europe and Asia during human history. The authors of the study you cited even conclude with:
“…even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population. Thus, caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes.”
Caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry…
…except for white supremacists, I suppose. Not that white supremacists are interested in any actual science, only misinterpretations that support their fantastical supremacist notions.
Agreed. These fights are tedious and offensive.
Breitbart’s response: