Northern-Centrism: Just Stop It!!

Fire Haired14

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I'm tired of the North European-centrism on several genetic-forums including this one. Posters aren't blatantly obvious about their sentiments, but there's a trend I've noticed. It seems posters attempt to dilute their Neolithic West Asian, Pre-IE European, etc. blood as much as possible, increase Mesolithic European and "Steppe" ancestry as much as possible, etc. And some posters even argue their ethnic group is paler pigmented than the stero-type. I'm fed up with it.

Facts are facts. Whoever people descend from is who they descend from. If you post on Genetic forum your goal should be figuring out the facts, not proving what you want to be true. Your ancestry doesn't define who you are at all. I think it's unhealthy to care a lot about origins if you think it defines yourself and others. It's okay to be proud of your origins, but at the same time not let it define you and be open to whatever the evidence shows.

I think the motivation for the North European-centrism on genetic-forums is what I just described. People want to be more "Hunter Gatherer" and "Steppe", because they like the ideas and characters we have surrounding those people, and they think it affects who they are. There isn't just North European-centrism, I've seen posters with other centrisms. I don't think most of the smarter Posters like Davidski, Maju, Dienkes and others have much of an agenda. I think they're looking mostly for the facts.

One last thing. Put yourself in the shoes of the Pre-Historic(sometimes Historic) peoples discussed on these forums. They didn't know much about anything outside of their own village and small region. The concepts of WHG, ANE, ENF, etc. were alien to them. For the most part they didn't care about their own ancestry, and just lived for the here and now. They weren't supremacist and raciest(Maybe against a neighboring tribe, who were usually close relatives). They didn't have the same ideas about pigmentation people do today(unless neighbors were totally differnt from each other, but the characteristics behind it were probably differnt from today). Even if they did and had the same concepts genetic concepts, it doesn't justify people today making the same mistakes.
 
I'm tired of the North European-centrism on several genetic-forums including this one. Posters aren't blatantly obvious about their sentiments, but there's a trend I've noticed. It seems posters attempt to dilute their Neolithic West Asian, Pre-IE European, etc. blood as much as possible, increase Mesolithic European and "Steppe" ancestry as much as possible, etc. And some posters even argue their ethnic group is paler pigmented than the stero-type. I'm fed up with it.

Facts are facts. Whoever people descend from is who they descend from. If you post on Genetic forum your goal should be figuring out the facts, not proving what you want to be true. Your ancestry doesn't define who you are at all. I think it's unhealthy to care a lot about origins if you think it defines yourself and others. It's okay to be proud of your origins, but at the same time not let it define you and be open to whatever the evidence shows.

I think the motivation for the North European-centrism on genetic-forums is what I just described. People want to be more "Hunter Gatherer" and "Steppe", because they like the ideas and characters we have surrounding those people, and they think it affects who they are. There isn't just North European-centrism, I've seen posters with other centrisms. I don't think most of the smarter Posters like Davidski, Maju, Dienkes and others have much of an agenda. I think they're looking mostly for the facts.

One last thing. Put yourself in the shoes of the Pre-Historic(sometimes Historic) peoples discussed on these forums. They didn't know much about anything outside of their own village and small region. The concepts of WHG, ANE, ENF, etc. were alien to them. For the most part they didn't care about their own ancestry, and just lived for the here and now. They weren't supremacist and raciest(Maybe against a neighboring tribe, who were usually close relatives). They didn't have the same ideas about pigmentation people do today(unless neighbors were totally differnt from each other, but the characteristics behind it were probably differnt from today). Even if they did and had the same concepts genetic concepts, it doesn't justify people today making the same mistakes.

The LBK Neolithic samples in Germany ( and elsewhere ) are not northern european, they are from Anatolian areas ( haak paper)
 
I've noticed 90% of people in genetics/anthro forums have a personal agenda of some sort, be it northern, western, eastern, southern, martian, etc... Davidski tries to glorify R1a because he belongs to that group, Dienekes tries to give the Anatolian IE theory credit because he's a Greek from Turkey, don't even get me started on that Maju guy.
 
I've noticed 90% of people in genetics/anthro forums have a personal agenda of some sort, be it northern, western, eastern, southern, martian, etc... Davidski tries to glorify R1a because he belongs to that group, Dienekes tries to give the Anatolian IE theory credit because he's a Greek from Turkey, don't even get me started on that Maju guy.

Yeah, I agree. There's nothing wrong with focus on your own group to a point. I think those guys for the most part aren't biased.
 
I've noticed 90% of people in genetics/anthro forums have a personal agenda of some sort, be it northern, western, eastern, southern, martian, etc... Davidski tries to glorify R1a because he belongs to that group, Dienekes tries to give the Anatolian IE theory credit because he's a Greek from Turkey, don't even get me started on that Maju guy.

He is basque
 
I'm tired of the North European-centrism on several genetic-forums including this one. Posters aren't blatantly obvious about their sentiments, but there's a trend I've noticed. It seems posters attempt to dilute their Neolithic West Asian, Pre-IE European, etc. blood as much as possible, increase Mesolithic European and "Steppe" ancestry as much as possible, etc. And some posters even argue their ethnic group is paler pigmented than the stero-type. I'm fed up with it.
never noticed that. Maybe you're wrong!
 
I'm tired of the North European-centrism on several genetic-forums including this one. Posters aren't blatantly obvious about their sentiments, but there's a trend I've noticed. It seems posters attempt to dilute their Neolithic West Asian, Pre-IE European, etc. blood as much as possible, increase Mesolithic European and "Steppe" ancestry as much as possible, etc. And some posters even argue their ethnic group is paler pigmented than the stero-type. I'm fed up with it.

Facts are facts. Whoever people descend from is who they descend from. If you post on Genetic forum your goal should be figuring out the facts, not proving what you want to be true. Your ancestry doesn't define who you are at all. I think it's unhealthy to care a lot about origins if you think it defines yourself and others. It's okay to be proud of your origins, but at the same time not let it define you and be open to whatever the evidence shows.

I think the motivation for the North European-centrism on genetic-forums is what I just described. People want to be more "Hunter Gatherer" and "Steppe", because they like the ideas and characters we have surrounding those people, and they think it affects who they are. There isn't just North European-centrism, I've seen posters with other centrisms. I don't think most of the smarter Posters like Davidski, Maju, Dienkes and others have much of an agenda. I think they're looking mostly for the facts.

One last thing. Put yourself in the shoes of the Pre-Historic(sometimes Historic) peoples discussed on these forums. They didn't know much about anything outside of their own village and small region. The concepts of WHG, ANE, ENF, etc. were alien to them. For the most part they didn't care about their own ancestry, and just lived for the here and now. They weren't supremacist and raciest(Maybe against a neighboring tribe, who were usually close relatives). They didn't have the same ideas about pigmentation people do today(unless neighbors were totally differnt from each other, but the characteristics behind it were probably differnt from today). Even if they did and had the same concepts genetic concepts, it doesn't justify people today making the same mistakes.

well said:clap:
 
Nah, I am keeping my North East Euro, Baltic and at last Latvian bias with me :)
 
some people are obviously biassed, for some others it's not obvious
for those who are, it's stupid to try to argue against them, it won't help, they actually create a problem for themselves
I think everybody has their preferences, it's innate
I try to be critical with an open mind, I hope I am
prejudices won't help anyone here who tries to find the trueth
 
Well said, Bicicleur.

It's natural to have preferences; it's just human nature. The problem is when those preferences interfere with an objective analysis of the material. It's even one thing if that biased interpretation of data, such as one where all haplogroups originate in one's own country, is just a sort of harmless eccentricity. It's another thing if data is deliberately misinterpreted, or in the worst cases actually distorted, to prove the superiority of one group over another. It may sound melodramatic, but when it's animated by some sort of hateful ideology like neo-Nazism, whose purpose is to degrade and defame other people, it rises to a dangerous level.

The best way to approach all these hobbyists and their interpretations, in my opinion, is the same way you would do it in any other sphere of life when you're trying to evaluate claims: analyze the person's work carefully, not just what they write today, but what they wrote yesterday, their track record, if you like; check whether their methodology is published and transparent, because something as simple as which dataset was used or which populations were included can change everything; see if there are others, hopefully academics with a reputation to lose, who have reached similar conclusions, or who were able to follow their methodology and reach the same conclusions ; and, yes, figure out, if you can, their past associations and background. Wouldn't you want to know if the author of a study telling you how good alcohol is for you was funded by the Whiskey seller's association? That doesn't make them wrong necessarily, but it's important to know it.

That said, while I don't think you can defame anonymous people, I think it's best to keep names out of the discussion. It's a bit unseemly, and leads to all sorts of unpleasantness, even threats in the past. So, let's keep it to generalities, please.
 
I'm tired of the North European-centrism on several genetic-forums including this one. Posters aren't blatantly obvious about their sentiments, but there's a trend I've noticed. It seems posters attempt to dilute their Neolithic West Asian, Pre-IE European, etc. blood as much as possible, increase Mesolithic European and "Steppe" ancestry as much as possible, etc. And some posters even argue their ethnic group is paler pigmented than the stero-type. I'm fed up with it.

Good that you now realized it. Angela and me tried to tell you. We know some of these members for long now. Hopefully you will now also see that the "Near Eastern" portion in many of those calculators are tried to be deluted as much as possible.

But again you are still trusting too much in some bloggers and them not having an agenda. But Angela and I know them for longer and have seen allot of statements of them which not only are genetically but also politically motivated.
 
Well I thought that even at Southern Europeans most of their ancestry comes from Steppe and Hunter Gatherer people.
Which were Northern people.
Besides,Caucasian admixture which makes another large part of Europeans ancestry,is also a region were climate is most closed to North Europe,because very high altitudes.
So Caucasian admixture is also rather towards Northern Europe admixture,than towards Anatolian admixture.
EDIT:
If you take how white skinned people from Georgia are,they are almost as white as Central Europeans.
Why should we deny our genetics?
 
Well I thought that even at Southern Europeans most of their ancestry comes from Steppe and Hunter Gatherer people.
Which were Northern people.
Besides,Caucasian admixture which makes another large part of Europeans ancestry,is also a region were climate is most closed to North Europe,because very high altitudes.
So Caucasian admixture is also rather towards Northern Europe admixture,than towards Anatolian admixture.
EDIT:
If you take how white skinned people from Georgia are,they are almost as white as Central Europeans.
Why should we deny our genetics?

EVERYONE is descended 100% from hunter-gatherers. Natufians were hunter-gatherers as much as the WHG were hunter-gatherers. The people in the Near East who invented agriculture and animal husbandry were hunter-gatherers. I think it's safe to say that in certain quarters being descended from the WHG is preferred to being descended from the Natufians and other Near Eastern hunter gatherers. Perhaps the reason is because the WHG are held to be "native" Europeans. Perhaps it was felt that they were "whiter", which is ironic given their snp pigmentation profile.

I've said before and I'll say again that Europe is a sink for population flow, not a source. Everyone came from somewhere else. Where is the dividing line temporally? Is some WHG who arrived in Europe from somewhere in the Near East in, say 22,000 BCE, more "European" than an EEF who arrived 8,000 years ago? What about the EHG? We don't know when they arrived, but part of their ancestry seems to have come from somewhere far to the east.

"Europeans" didn't exist, in my opinion, until around 2,000 BC at the earliest, and they were formed from a combination of three ancient population groups: WHG, EEF, and Yamnaya. Here is the graphic, once again:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NoGN9ni1kms/VOSGkPjblNI/AAAAAAAACBk/1Zqfpb20B08/s1600/Untitled3.png
Untitled3.png


Perhaps a new one should be done using an actual early Near Eastern farmer in the analysis instead of Stuttgart, but it seems that the samples we have so far are not sufficiently high coverage. Until we find one, given that the Barcin sample is almost identical to Stuttgart (a 4-5 point difference in the Dodecad K7), I don't see what the problem is in using that genome to represent the people who brought farming into Europe from the Near East.

(Yes, I know there are people who claim Barcin is 20%WHG. So what if WHG was present in the Near East at that time? That suddenly makes Barcin and similar early farmers from the Near East not Near Eastern? By that logic, maybe it just makes WHG not "European". Honestly, I don't know and I don't care. All I was ever interested in was if agriculture was spread by people or cultural diffusion, and how much of our ancestry comes from the people who brought it.)

As to your question about southern Europeans, Lazaridis has been out for a while, and it's clear from his paper that the amount of Yamnaya ancestry in them is obviously less than in northern Europeans. I understand you're Romanian...the Bulgarian results should be reasonably close for you. If you don't want to deny your ancestry, then how about you start by acknowledging and celebrating your almost 60% EEF ancestry. You could even use the EEF/WHG/ANE computation under which the EEF in Bulgarians is 70%.

All this discussion of "whiteness" just proves my point regarding the underlying motivations and pre-occupations of many hobbyists. I am not going to get into another pigmentation discussion. Please avail yourself of the search engine and read up on it.
 
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I don't think most of the smarter Posters like Davidski, Maju, Dienkes and others have much of an agenda. I think they're looking mostly for the facts.

Davidski has a typical polish anti-german bias:

davidski said:
Honestly, I doubt there were any Germanics in Poland prior to the Viking mercenaries who settled there during the Medieval period.
http://polishgenes.blogspot.nl/2013/05/polish-goths-enjoyed-their-millet-while.html

Dienekes has a colossal "west asia is the womb of nations bias". His nickname is Dienekes Pontikos, meaning "from the pontes".

Maju's bias you already found yourself.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/31065-Is-Maju-a-Political-Extremist

I myself have hundreds of agenda's. Most of them contradictory. I keep changing agenda's every so many hours, to keep a fresh perspective. But also to confuse the enemy...
 
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O, and Alan, as a Kurd you obviously promote West-Asian ancestry as more important.

So I have a suggestion. Let us all have biases - mine is that I consider mesolithic and neolithic cultures the Rhine land and the North Sea Coastline far more ancestral to our current culture than some - but lets keep it to an acceptable level.

One thing is absolutely sure. I can SEE neolithic continuity in my surroundings. Wheatbread is still a staple food. The way farms were build by the LBK was practiced where I live until two generations ago: A house and stables in the same building.

2003.2_nr_35_langgevel_Liemde_600_x_387.jpg
 
EVERYONE is descended 100% from hunter-gatherers. Natufians were hunter-gatherers as much as the WHG were hunter-gatherers. The people in the Near East who invented agriculture and animal husbandry were hunter-gatherers. I think it's safe to say that in certain quarters being descended from the WHG is preferred to being descended from the Natufians and other Near Eastern hunter gatherers. Perhaps the reason is because the WHG are held to be "native" Europeans. Perhaps it was felt that they were "whiter", which is ironic given their snp pigmentation profile.

I've said before and I'll say again that Europe is a sink for population flow, not a source. Everyone came from somewhere else. Where is the dividing line temporally? Is some WHG who arrived in Europe from somewhere in the Near East in, say 22,000 BCE, more "European" than an EEF who arrived 8,000 years ago? What about the EHG? We don't know when they arrived, but part of their ancestry seems to have come from somewhere far to the east.

"Europeans" didn't exist, in my opinion, until around 2,000 BC at the earliest, and they were formed from a combination of three ancient population groups: WHG, EEF, and Yamnaya. Here is the graphic, once again:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NoGN9ni1kms/VOSGkPjblNI/AAAAAAAACBk/1Zqfpb20B08/s1600/Untitled3.png
Untitled3.png


Perhaps a new one should be done using an actual early Near Eastern farmer in the analysis instead of Stuttgart, but it seems that the samples we have so far are not sufficiently high coverage. Until we find one, given that the Barcin sample is almost identical to Stuttgart (a 4-5 point difference in the Dodecad K7), I don't see what the problem is in using that genome to represent the people who brought farming into Europe from the Near East.

(Yes, I know there are people who claim Barcin is 20%WHG. So what if WHG was present in the Near East at that time? That suddenly makes Barcin and similar early farmers from the Near Easat not Near Eastern? By that logic, maybe it just makes WHG not "European. Honestly, I don't know and I don't care. All I was ever interested in was if agriculture was spread by people or cultural diffusion, and how much of our ancestry comes from the people who brought it.)

As to your question about southern Europeans, Lazaridis has been out for a while, and it's clear from his paper that the amount of Yamnaya ancestry in them is obviously less than in northern Europeans. I understand you're Romanian...the Bulgarian results should be reasonably close for you. If you don't want to deny your ancestry, then how about you start by acknowledging and celebrating your almost 60% EEF ancestry. You could even use the EEF/WHG/ANE computation under which the EEF in Bulgarians is 70%.

All this discussion of "whiteness" just proves my point regarding the underlying motivations and pre-occupations of many hobbyists. I am not going to get into another pigmentation discussion. Please avail yourself of the search engine and read up on it.

On LBKT_EN .............the many samples are all found in Central upper Germany ( Saxony ), the are 100% EEF ( as per the graph ), yet the theory that others bring to other sites on the internet is that they did not come from Anatolia as per what Haak states, but came via the steppe .............this is why they are noted as northern european.
I follow that they came via Anatolia
 
(Yes, I know there are people who claim Barcin is 20%WHG. So what if WHG was present in the Near East at that time? That suddenly makes Barcin and similar early farmers from the Near Easat not Near Eastern? By that logic, maybe it just makes WHG not "European. Honestly, I don't know and I don't care. All I was ever interested in was if agriculture was spread by people or cultural diffusion, and how much of our ancestry comes from the people who brought it.)

WHG was definitely/absolutely found in Western Asia before. At least in Anatolia, Caucasus and Nearby regions. EEF at least evolved in Anatolia we can assume that from the Vinca sample which is basically Barcin+some more WHG. Therefore it is save to assume that Anatolian farmers were already Barcin like and some(not all) of them absorbed WHG in the Balkans on their way into Central and West Europe.
 
O, and Alan, as a Kurd you obviously promote West-Asian ancestry as more important.

Sure I have my own prefferences(almost anyone has some). I even mentioned in one of my posts about Yamna dark pigmentation that of course as a Kurd I will have a slight bias towards my people and region. But in contrast I do not create my own calculators and try to manipulate other people and their minds :)
 
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