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This guy helped co-author the Global Guidelines for Ancient DNA research.
So if you think there is left-wing bias, you're absolutely right. They're upfront about it.
I see the video only has 45 views currently. I don't think a lot of people know about this.
It was bound to happen; I am surprised it took that long.
The fan clubs of blonde cowboys and jive survivors have been running rampant for the past ten years, the other extremity was bound to take notice eventually.
It's a sad state of affairs, hopefully the field is not going to turn into a political battlefield, but I am not very optimistic.
I wish we could have the raw facts without the attempt of social engineering.
I feel like this actually has the opposite affect that was intended, because it affirms that they're intentionally creating an ideological narrative before the results are determined. Whether the data shows it or not.
What if it actually does affirm identity and belonging? I don't think it is necessarily means the exclusion of others. It just is what it is.
I feel an identity and belonging based on other factors, but it doesn't prevent me from appreciating and accepting others.
This is what very left-wing people fail to understand.
Wow, it just get's worse...
This man retweets a post from a twitter profile called the Dialectical Biologist
Dialectical Biologist was a book written by marxist and sophist, Richard Lewontin.
That's a clear overview what is wrong with it? Not speaking about the labels, but about the content, is the "nested subset" wrong?Originally Posted by Jovialis
Wow, it just get's worse...
This man retweets a post from a twitter profile called the Dialectical Biologist
Dialectical Biologist was a book written by marxist and sophist, Richard Lewontin.
It is about the man himself, Richard Lewontin was a Marxist who was intentionally politically biased in his work. He tried to minimize differences between human populations. There's even a fallacy named for him:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huma...in%27s_Fallacy
We've had some posts and threads that highlight the shaddy and dishonest work of Richard Lewontin. I'll link them when I have a chance later. If a man like that is a guiding force post-mortem in population genetics, we aren't getting a clear picture of the truth. We're looking at it through the lense of political extremism.
I disgust labeling and judging books by covers... I want to judge it on face value not on arbitrary political remarks.
so intrepid in your words Jovialis, and yet this guy is not a complete amateour.
Remeber aDna is statistics, yet there is no post regarding the identintity and belonging to those who created it, diffused and so on. and that is almost fair because somewhere after the middle ages things were not blood related but passion/interest related. it is not about what you are but who you are!
so just to precipitate the confusion: do you feel more Minoan, more Anatolian Farmer, or more PPN?
anyway this guy might be left wing, but you also are pretty much leaning away from the center. best b.
Minoan_Lasithi to be more precise. ;)
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...l=1#post657263
Is veering off center to say that Native Americans should be given the same standard, and they should have no identity or sense of belonging based on aDNA? How about Africans, Australian aboriginals, etc? Telling them they should not feel a sense of belonging is Right-wing or Left-wing?
Take a look at the man's twitter feed, and let me know if you think he is not an adherent left-wing ideologue, and that he's being an honest broker; being totally impartial. A man of science...
Asking someone to strictly report the facts is going off center to the right? That's extraordinary.
I don't give a damn if he is gay, if he visits hookers, if he is a Jehova, if he is a proud boy....I just want to know if he has got a point here....
if we first have to take a baptismal cell of every scientist, then the end is lost.
How about a more sophisticated view of population genetic differences in recent times?I don't give a damn if he is gay, if he visits hookers, if he is a Jehova, if he is a proud boy....I just want to know if he has got a point here....
if we first have to take a baptismal cell of every scientist, then the end is lost.
\How about a more sophisticated view of population genetic differences in recent times?
So variant B 2.0?
Well, scholars that behave like woke activists don‘t have a point but are a PROBLEM. Agenda-driven research is a problem regardless of the political affiliation. Here's the thing the biological reality of race is being rejected for PC reasons. The scientific consensus that race is a social construct is therefore not based on science but rather on ideology. The assertation that race "is a social construct" comes from a good place but nevertheless it's not scientific sound. The point is, that researchers who insert their bias or ideology in their research don‘t really adhere to the scientific methods.I don't give a damn if he is gay, if he visits hookers, if he is a Jehova, if he is a proud boy....I just want to know if he has got a point here....
if we first have to take a baptismal cell of every scientist, then the end is lost.
And some scholars like Nathan Cofnas are drawing attention to the fact that PC obstructs the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry and prevents the advancement of science.
......some research is so politically controversial that few dare to speak of it in public for fear of running afoul of the PC police. And this fear, argues Nathan Cofnas in the journal Foundations of Science, obstructs the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry.
Mr. Cofnas begins the paper with the story of Socrates, who was executed for "corrupting the youth" of Greece. Forebodingly, he adds, "[T]he philosophy of his prosecutors — that morality-threatening scientific investigation should be prohibited — flourishes even today."
To support his case, Mr. Cofnas focuses on the taboo subject of group differences in intelligence, which he says is suppressed by those who believe that even discussing the topic is "morally wrong or morally dangerous."
Those who embrace such a viewpoint obviously do so with the honorable intention of preventing discrimination. However, the proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions. Such misguided efforts to maintain perfect equality can hamper the advancement of knowledge. Mr. Cofnas states:
"[W]hen hypotheses are regarded as supporting certain moral values or desirable political goals, scientists often refuse to abandon them in the light of empirical evidence."
Is he right? Absolutely, yes.
Not only do intellectuals refuse to abandon politically correct beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, but simply questioning them can ruin a person's career. Lawrence Summers' tenure as president of Harvard was cut short because he suggested that there are intellectual differences between men and women. As a result of such punitive pushback, some researchers are afraid to investigate differences between male and female brains, which certainly exist. Without a doubt, this reticence is holding back the field of neuroscience.
A similar chilling effect can be seen in climatology. The only politically correct belief regarding the climate is that humans are 100% responsible for everything bad that happens and that the Four Horsemen are already marching toward Earth. Questioning that apocalyptic and unscientific belief has resulted in multiple researchers being labeled "climate deniers." Climatology would greatly benefit from the more skeptical approach of so-called "lukewarmers," but far too many are ostracized and demonized....
https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/08/11...ent-of-science
Certainly, many -- perhaps most -- people prefer to ignore reality in favor of feel-good fallacies. Mr. Cofnas believes this phenomenon is rooted in a "deep human impulse to conflate facts and moral values." In other words, (positive) statements that describe the world as it is are often interpreted by people as (normative) statements that prescribe the world as it ought to be.
“If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VI, 21
Maybe that is the point that these guidelines should address: because your actual DNA plots on top of aDNA, does that yield any connection between the two?
you can go the easy way and say YES, as Raveanne does assuming no changes locally over time.
or you can go the hard way and make the temporal map of DNA dynamics, kind of what the Southern Arc does by mapping italian genetics. and they do observe not only changes but almost oscillations: actual components are almost identical to 3000 years ago, but in between there is half a wave.
btw, it is not that Raveanne is wrong, the 95% interval of confidence for the soithern Arc componemts for italy is very broad. and you are allowed to draw a straight line from 3000 years ago to present within that interval.... which would let you feel as Minoan as those guys from 3000 years ago. but to come to that you have to through to garbage the Central curb.
so to you the choise if you want to identify with that aJovialis that lived somwhow 3KYears ago.
Assuming that every individual found in a slave cemetry of a port city left a lasting genetic impact is pretty bold; even more so if we then postulate an unproven migration from central Europe during the dark age that magically restored the same aDNA landscape of the early Iron Age...of course, some minor contributions from Imperial age slaves and dark age germanic invaders are possible, but the elements of continuity in the region cannot be ignored and are infact higlighted by the last study from Raveane.
SA_Rav.jpg
I am a bit skeptical by nature, and I do love details:
I drew a straight line (nearly) in all Italian components. You do see that there is a periodicity of around 3000 years in all of them.
If you follow the straight line you are assuming continuity and you end up with Raveane's simulation: you have no constrains or boundaries in those 3 millennia. and you can well observe one of the characterizing features of Minoans (or Mycenaeans)
CHG-EHG =18% as a pillar along that straight line (around 20%).
but you do notice that aDNA does not really advise you to go in a straight line and it poses a wall on CHG. In a simulation you can tunnel through that wall, in reality you are obliged to walk the long path and climb the wall. At the peak you have CHG-EHG~35%.
We can all draw our conclusion as we wish because the dotted lines that provide the Norm allow us to travel through time in an infinite number of paths, but just one of those paths is reality. alternatively, because there are an infinite number of paths, we cannot claim for the moment which one represents history.
I think that is what the guidelines should state. Who should write these guidelines, that I dont know!
I pretty much agree with this last point, that's why we should always confront ourselves with archeological and historical data to back up any hypothesis and that's also what makes me more likely to accept the "continuity thesis" for Italy.
Unfortunately, I fear that those guidelines are not intended to be used this way, but maybe I'm just disenchanted by how academia works in general.
in a certain sense, any changes that have happened in and from the roman era, are not comparable in scale with the neolothic and Bronze age revolutions. so in perspective i would say that there is quite some continuity relative to this major events. ;)
i wonder what will happen if we find in some mountain and enclave of Western Hunter Gatherers.... should we declare them a protected species, should we label them the true masters of the continent, should we call them inbreeders and eternal losers. honestly I do pitty whoever will be in charge of this kind of policy making. When nobody calls you to organise a conference and you need to get tenured, then you might move into this kind of actions to get some visibility. or if you are an old professor with no new ideas from a decade you can also take this kind of option just to feel useful.
It's indeed a social construct. Why? Because it's not a given thing where you 'draw the lines'. So it has a relationship with choices, that's not like the law of gravity.
One argument for recognising human population clusters is how trivial it is to use basic data science tools to generate a PCA plot of a multi-ethnic sample and quickly determine the weighting of the sample (eg lots of Europeans near the origin point, less samples on the tails).
This is an overview of data science using OpenSNP samples to predict human height from the genotype. Note that the 23andme samples only have around ~650,000 SNPs out of about 65 million SNPs that vary between humans.
dbaranger.medium.com/on-predicting-traits-with-genetics-b5967cba949
Last edited by hadrian; 16-09-22 at 06:44. Reason: snps
It is a model, there's other models that work well too. There's already posts and threads written at great lengths expressing how you cannot count every foreigner that came into Italy (or anywhere else for that matter), aggregate them in on average, and pretend that is good science or archeology.
Also what about the important caveat to the study that demonstrates those people died out by the end of Late Antiquity? Have you forgotten?
I identify as a modern person, but there is something to the fact that Apulians and other southerners are closer to the Ancient Greeks/Greece_N than the vast majority of the populations in the Balkans. Why gloss over that, and use a bunch of random samples from a cosmopolitan time in a different part of Italy to make the case?
Modern Southern Italians are closer to Southern European Neolithic and Bronze Age samples (Neolithic Peloponnesians and Minoans) than most modern Peloponnesian groups, with the exception of the Deep Mani and Taygetos individuals
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...501?via%3Dihub
I agree. I identify as an Italian in terms of ethnicity. The festivals we celebrate, because they are the "Italians" with whom we most identify, are those relating to the Medieval and Renaissance eras.
That doesn't mean that I'm going to ignore ancient dna. Of course, any analysis of it in comparison to my own dna has to be informed by history and archaeology.
With one of the tools which is available I am closest to northern Balkan (Macedonian) and Albanian Iron Age samples. Now, what does that mean? Given that I am not from the Balkans it may only mean that I happen to have coincidentally inherited genes similar to those of the people of that time and place. However, it doesn't seem likely that it's a total coincidence, like the product of a Chinese and a Brit plotting on top of Central Asians, given how close I am. The Balkans and Italy have a long history, having received the same migrations in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, as well as having some degree of WHG. More importantly, in terms of possible descent, there is documented movement from the Balkans into Italy, movement which has continued down to the present, although more of that later.
So, should I apply for citizenship in modern Makedonia or Albania? :) Clearly not, for they have their own history and culture, which I don't share, and it is more a case of shared ancestors from a distant past, although perhaps it does speak somewhat to the fact that Italy did not change as much as the Balkans since those periods.
In another tool, I can be modeled as over 60% Latini, a big chunk of Minoan_Lashithi, and a bit left over apparently. Now, what "path" led to that very good fit? It's hardly a coincidence, like the model of the offspring of the Brit and the East Asian. I have a detailed genealogy, which, although it doesn't go back to the Classical Era, goes back on almost all lines to the 1500s, and on some lines to the 1000s, all, by the way, in a very circumscribed area of northwestern Emilia, northwestern Toscana, and eastern Liguria.
So, does it strain credulity that I am the descendant of the Latins who populated my area of Italy, and Greeks, mainland or Aegean, and perhaps some Greek speaking people from Anatolia itself, who were perhaps residents of Luni, a major cosmopolitan hub also in my area? I don't think so. Now, yes, it is true that after the fall of the Empire, Germanics, most importantly, in terms of numbers, the Lombards, came into this area. Their castles dot every hill of the Magra, and indeed I was born in the shadow of the tower built by them. More than that, the family name of the "dynasty" which ruled our (my mother's) area appears in her family tree, not a fact of which she is proud, given that a more rapacious, inept group of robber barons would be difficult to find.
So, did the Lombards have some genetic effect in my area? Yes, I'm sure they did. The operative question is how much. What all the proponents of this mass wave from Central Europe after the fall of Rome conveniently forget over and over again is that by their own reckoning, the Lombards and associated Germanic groups numbered 60,000 people, including women and children. Ancient peoples were wont to play fast and loose with numbers, but always, to my knowledge, to enlarge them. Plus, the proof is in the archaeology and the genetics. The largest number of Lombard castles lie in northeastern Italy, which was the first area in Italy which they subdued, and which they had to protect against incursions by the Slavs. Is it a coincidence that that is where the largest concentration of yDna R1b U-106 and I1 can be found? By comparison, the percentages in Toscana are under 10%.
Unless the rest of northern and northwestern-central Italy was invaded by Lombard women, this "massive" wave from Central Europe to magically turn people more "northern" again didn't happen. If someone is going to try to prove it they're going to have to do more than propose a statistical model. They're going to have to show me that wave in the archaeology and the yDna.
Lastly, most of these people conveniently forget the only IBD analysis done which looks at the issue of the impact of migrations on Europeans, and that is Ralph and Coop. The chart makes very clear what they reiterate again and again. No significant migration events changed the dna of Italians after about 400 B.C., other than some input from the Balkans. That nicely covers both the Gauls and the Greeks of Magna Graecia, btw.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiolog...l.pbio.1001555
One of the charts. Not shown in this particular one, but mentioned in the paper, to the best of my recollection, is the fact that Turkish genes were also examined.
Until one of these labs addresses it and does their own IBD analysis, and addresses the yDna disparities, and includes the archaeology and histories, I will remain unconvinced that "their" path is the correct one.
Non si fa il proprio dovere perchè qualcuno ci dica grazie, lo si fa per principio, per se stessi, per la propria dignità. Oriana Fallaci
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