An enormous intellectual vigor allowed him to follow up hypotheses without becoming wedded to them. Never a writer of small papers, he looked for the larger significance. It may be said that Coon's major contributions to science were the fruitful formulations that followed from his assimilation and organization of massive amounts of information.
PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: RACIAL ADAPTATIONS
Carleton Coon's The Races of Europe (1939) began as a revision of W. Z. Ripley's 1900 work but ended as a new opus that used every scrap of published information on living populations and prehistoric human remains — and much recorded history besides. Though some of Coon's hypotheses seem dubious today, they allowed him to structure a mass of material in a way that remains impressive. This book was reprinted some years later and is still regarded as a valuable source of data.
[...]
Coon's desire was to use Darwinian adaptation to explain the physical characteristics of race. He defined these as the physical features that distinguish modern populations and in 1950 published, with S. M. Garn and J. B. Birdsell, Races: A Study of the Problems of Race Formation in Man. He was exasperated by what he called the "hide-race" attitude of people who, from social or philosophical motives, seemed to deny the existence of obvious biological differences. He became indignant at any suggestion that his interest in race derived from racist motives. Although a good many articles had been written about environmental adaptation of such traits, this book was the first to address the problem as a whole.
[...]
After holding several serious ailments at bay for some years, Carl died on June 3, 1981, at his West Gloucester home, shortly before his seventy-seventh birthday. His brilliance left a lasting mark on a generation of anthropologists.
W. W. Howells. "Biographical Memoirs V.58". National Academy of Sciences, 1989.
46 comments
Hippocrates Exposed has responded to this post, and since he (annoyingly) doesn't allow comments on his blog -- or leave comments on other people's blogs -- I have to reply this way. He writes:
"But by modern standards of population genetics, Coon's mostly a joke"
That's not true at all. Coon (and other early anthropologists) basically collected and organized craniofacial data, much the same way as anthropologists do today, and that kind of data has been shown to correspond with genetic variation.
Indeed, many of his findings have been, and are still being, confirmed by population genetics. For example, he was able to tell that East Africans have Caucasoid ancestry, that Jews have European admixture, that Northeastern Europeans have a small Asian component, and that Nordics derive from Mediterraneans. His ideas about prehistoric migrations into Europe are also making a comeback based on recent genetic evidence.
Overall, Coon got a lot more right than he got wrong. And that's no joke.
Coon is Ok, there was surely a lot worse authors out there to critique. To be fair however, much of that can be said for fellow dated authors like Deniker and Sergi--same with Hooton. Coon borrowed much from those authors besides. But much of their work still holds up well today.
TROE itself was an updated work of Ripley(another author whom he borrowed a lot from as well). I'm not terribly a big fan of TROE to be honest and it really could have used an overhaul & complete update in the late 70's--also to include his updated views(which changed to a great degree since 1939). All his garden variety of Nordics and UP's were a crock along with the "purest Mediterraneans" can be found in Arabia or some shit like that. I cannot agree nor support some of the things he wrote down either.
I collect a lot've Coon along with other authors books as a hobby. Besides, I really hate relying on secondhand(often net based) information-- I prefer to own a copy--plus its good to not limit myself to one author.
Some of these Geneticists seem kinda wacky as some the old Physical Anthropologists.
"Those who dislike the findings and racial classifications of early anthropologist Carleton S. Coon will try to write him off as outdated, argue that his research is superficial, or that all of his data should be thrown out because some of his theories were wrong."
Maybe because he IS outdated (today especially, but Coon was outdated even way back in his own day!), because his research IS superficial, and his theories are mostly bogus either because he started with faulty (and idiotic) premises or because he jumped onto ridiculous conclusions.
"An appreciation written a few years after his death by a modern anthropologist disproves these claims and affirms the continuing value and influence of his work."
Non sequitur! Jusr because an obscure anthropologist (who is also dead) heaped some praise upon him, does not make Carleton Coon any less of a hack.
"That's not true at all. Coon (and other early anthropologists) basically collected and organized craniofacial data, much the same way as anthropologists do today, and that kind of data has been shown to correspond with genetic variation."
The problem with that is that, first off, anthropometric data is "analog" (i.e. infinitely variable within a range) whereas genetic data is digital (i.e. discretely variable), so classifications based on continuously variable data are far more arbitrary. Secondly, craniofacial features and other morphological metrics are only partially hereditary, so any correspondence with genetics is limited. A great mass of craniometric and other anthropometric data, if carefully analyzed does correspond fairly reliably to ancestral "race" but to use a few arbitrarily selected metrics (or to assume that skeletal morphology is an infallible indicator of ancestry) yields a very poor result. Coon is guilty of these very mistakes (his over reliance on the cephalic index being a key example).
"East Africans have Caucasoid ancestry"
Not quite. If by "East Africans" you mean Northeast Africans or Hamitic peoples or Horn peoples (i.e. Ethiopians, Somali, Beja, etc.) then they are neither "Caucasoid" nor "Negroid" but members of an intermediate population that may have contributed to both of the aforementioned, or simply split off around the time that Eurasians separated from (sub-Saharan) Africans. To be fair, ethnic Ethiopians (i.e. the Semitic speaking Amhara and Tigre) do appear to have non-negligible Europid ancestry of Arabian origin, but to claim that East Africans are an OFFSHOOT of Caucasoids smacks of the "Hamitic theory."
"Jews have European admixture"
Gee, ya think? Could it be that after living in Europe for 1500 or so years Jews (Ashkenazim and some Sephardim) may have European ancestry? No way! You just blew my mind! So the Zionist mythology that Jewish people are pure descendents of the Semitic Israelites is not historical fact?
"Northeastern Europeans have a small Asian component"
Ditto... Who would have thunk that Northeastern Europeans could possibly have Asiatic ancestry in light of the fact that they share the area with superficially Mongoloid-looking people who speak Uralic languages (probably closer to Mongolian, Turkic languages, Tungusic languages, and even Japanese and Korean than any other European languages)? Seriously, anyone can take a look at Icelandic artist Bjork and come to that conclusion.
"Nordics derive from Mediterraneans"
That remains to be seen. If Paleolithic Continuity is found to be correct, then that pretty much debunks the notion that "Nordics" are derived from Mediterranean peoples. If Neolithic Replacement turns out to be correct, then by default, "Nordics" must have derived from Mediterraneans, though that means ALL Europeans would be of Mediterranean origin, except for Uralic tribes and maybe the Basques.
"His ideas about prehistoric migrations into Europe are also making a comeback based on recent genetic evidence."
Interestingly, despite the prevalance of what Dienekes terms the "anti-Migrationist" stance, I am not surprised that demic diffusion and/or Neolithic replacement models are making a comeback. I for one find strong paleolithic continuity to be somewhat fanciful. (Consider the Bantu expansion in Africa, or the European colonization of North America.) That said, ironically, Coon seems a lot like a supporter of paleolithic continuity, at least to some extent considering his frequent mention of Upper Paleolithic "survivors" including his designation of "Alpines," which he ridiculously considers UP types (despite the fact that they are described as generally stocky in proportions but otherwise average Europeans). We should wait for further genetic data to more satisfactorily answer questions about the origins of European populations.
So far, all of the "findings" you credit to Coon are either false, or blatantly obvious, or else await further evidence.
"Coon is Ok, there was surely a lot worse authors out there to critique. To be fair however, much of that can be said for fellow dated authors like Deniker and Sergi--same with Hooton. Coon borrowed much from those authors besides. But much of their work still holds up well today."
Agreed! However, in fairness to Sergi, even though his morphological analysis was largely tied to physiognomy, to his credit he completely disregarded the cephalic index, looking instead at overall craniofacial morphology. As Boas and others found, cranial plasticity is a fact. Relying on one or two metrics or a single proportion is epically stupid. Sergi's anthropometrics were more "modern" in their application, and consequently, he developed a more logical race model.
"I'm not terribly a big fan of TROE to be honest and it really could have used an overhaul & complete update in the late 70's--also to include his updated views(which changed to a great degree since 1939)."
Right again! Case in point, Coon did eventually accept cranial plasticity (at least to some extent), and consequently concluded that "Dinarics" are actually "bracycephalized" Mediterraneans. Of course, the research of Boas et al dates from the turn of the 20th century, so TROE was out of date back when it was published in 1939!
"All his garden variety of Nordics and UP's were a crock along with the "purest Mediterraneans" can be found in Arabia or some shit like that."
Agreed!
Recap of what's wrong with Carleton Coon (and why nobody should have ever taken him seriously):
(1) He is hopelessly outdated today. Scratch that, he was outdated in his own day, let alone today!
(2) His "research" especially with regards to European morphologies, was biased by preconceived conclusions based on his attempt to salvage the work of Deniker and Ripley. Which leads to...
(3) His data was largely shoehorned. He tried to force quantitative data into qualitative labels, substituting (often arbitrarily applied) terms such as "bracycephalic" or "dolichocephalic" for numbers (actual measurements or ratios) so as to fit continuous variation into neat little boxes in his preconceived model. [And in all frankness, Carleton Coon was apparently mathematically retarded.]
(4) His evolutionary theory is ridiculous now, and was ridiculous then. Case in point, his extreme multiregional model is a biological impossibility. Were it true, we would not have "races" or even "subspecies" but distinct species! Nevermind, that multiregionalism has been proven false, and that out-of-Africa is nearly unanimously accepted. (Even those lone holdouts who claim that anatomically modern humans have some "archaic" ancestry accept that Homo sapiens mostly originated in Africa, with minor hybridization with Neanderthals or other archaics elsewhere. Coon's multiregionalism with minimal gene flow model, which produced five neat, hermetically sealed races (Australoid, Capoid, Caucasoid, Congoid, Mongoloid) ought to have produced as many as five species!
(5) Don't get me started on his conclusion that "Alpines" are UP remnants but "Noridics" are Mediterranean derived!
There is much more that I can say about your beloved Carleton Coon, and I don't care to list all the reasons why the cephalic index is a worthless anthropometric datum. Nor do I wish to resort to ad hominems, though Carleton Coon's racism is a well-attested phenomenon.
I conclude with this final comment. Carleton Coon was, ironically enough the main argument for "race-abolitionist" ideologies. By setting up a strawman definition of race (the major human races are "sub-species") and bolstering it with piss-poor physiognomy and phrenology-based "research" he provides a perfect whipping boy for far-left "race does not exist" ideologues. (And Coon's own staunch, regressive racism did not help!) Consider that, were it not for Carleton Coon, chances are you would never have had a reason to start a website or a blog called "Racial Reality" to begin with! Cavalli-Sforza and Jared Diamond (or even C. Loring Brace) might not need to pretend that they don't believe in "race." Why don't you honor a true pioneer in anthropology, the great Franz Boas (who, contrary to far-right historical revisionism, did not deny the existence of biological races.) The fact that you would praise a hack like Coon only calls into question your credibility.
RR, your PIECE OF SHIT BLOG won't let me post further comments. They keep disappearing!
>>> RR, your PIECE OF SHIT BLOG won't let me post further comments. They keep disappearing!
The system has determined that your comments are spam, and I have to agree. All of your repetitive and often ad-hominem attacks against Coon are based on opinions and ignorance, and are refuted by the sources referenced throughout this blog entry. I'll just address a few points not yet covered.
>>> Coon is guilty of these very mistakes (his over reliance on the cephalic index being a key example)
Coon relied on a whole battery of craniofacial measurements:
"For example, I have usually accepted the three principal dimensions of the cranial vault -- glabello-occpital length, maximum biparietal breadth, and basion-bregma height; the usual circumferences and arcs of the cranial vault; the minimum and maximum frontal and bizygomatic diameters; the interorbital and biortital diameters, and the height and width of the orbits; the height and breadth of the osseous nose, the diameters of the palate, and of the foramen magnum; the heights of the face from nasion to menton, and nasion to alveon; the principal dimensions of the mandible, such as the mental height, the breadth of the ascending ramus, and the bicondylar and bigonial diameters."
http://carnby.altervista.org/troe/01-03.htm
>>> Carleton Coon's racism is a well-attested phenomenon.
Some race-denying nobody with an axe to grind making dubious passing comments online does not equal "well-attested". That's the very definition of an "obscure anthropologist", not Howells who wrote the Coon appreciation and is quite prominent. The fact is that Coon was accused of racism throughout his later career. He always denied it, and I have yet to see any credible evidence of it.
>>> Carleton Coon was, ironically enough the main argument for "race-abolitionist" ideologies.
That's nonsense. The main arguments for race-abolition were (1) that studying race leads to racism, and (2) that there's no genetic basis for race. The former is political nonsense that applies to all early anthropologists, not just Coon, and the latter is a fallacy that's since been refuted.
>>> If Paleolithic Continuity is found to be correct, then that pretty much debunks the notion that "Nordics" are derived from Mediterranean peoples.
Mediterranean morphology is not tied specifically or exclusively to the Neolithic. According to Jelinek (Curr. Anthropol., 1969), the Brno II skull found in the Czech Republic and dated to 23,680 BP is of Mediterranean type. That predates the Neolithic, and could very well represent the migration of haplogroup I carriers from West Asia and Southeastern Europe to Northwestern Europe.
>>> As Boas and others found, cranial plasticity is a fact.
Boas' position has been misrepresented and exaggerated:
"As Holloway notes, 'Boas clearly states that his studies never claimed that there were no genetic components to head shape. ... The myth that the cephalic index was totally plastic and shaped by the environment was not something that Boas himself believed' (Holloway 2002:14622). [...] Boas's students who replicated and extended the immigrant study were equally clear on this point. Harry Shapiro, for example, concluded that 'the available evidence suggests that a given type is characterized by only a limited plasticity, and that the patterns of change are fixed by the nature of its fundamental structure' (Shapiro1939:199)."
http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/CG_pubs/gravlee03b.pdf
Well, thank you for posting my concluding post. I retract my FINAL final post... Now for my rebuttal.
"All of your repetitive and often ad-hominem attacks against Coon are based on opinions and ignorance"
That's YOUR opinion. Granted some ad-hominems may have found their way in, but that's besides the point.
"Coon relied on a whole battery of craniofacial measurements"
But he often simplified by limiting them to the least reliable, or using fuzzier categories. Nor did he always distinguish adaptive from non-adaptive skeletal traits.
"For example, I have usually accepted the three principal dimensions of the cranial vault -- glabello-occpital length, maximum biparietal breadth, and basion-bregma height;"
All of which are highly adaptive, even if bounded by hereditary constraints.
"the usual circumferences and arcs of the cranial vault; the minimum and maximum frontal and bizygomatic diameters;"
Also largely adaptive and plastic. (Facial breadth increase in lab mice raised in colder environments, for instance.)
Admittedly some, facial traits are less adaptive and more hereditary (even if the correlation of some facial measurements to racial ancestry might be a bit dubious), particularly relating to the harder bones of the jaws. (Not to mention teeth!)
"Some race-denying nobody with an axe to grind making dubious passing comments online does not equal "well-attested". That's the very definition of an "obscure anthropologist", not Howells who wrote the Coon appreciation and is quite prominent."
Well since you made yourself the Supreme Arbiter on which anthropologists are relevant (and who is a "nobody" or obscure), you can ask that "race-denying nobody" (Mike Salovesh) yourself. Have you had any personal correspondence with Coon?
"He always denied it, and I have yet to see any credible evidence of it."
Well, it is socially acceptable to deny being a racist, but do you really think his teleological multiregionalism is not a tad racist? (Different human subspecies developed separately over hundreds of millenia?)
"That's nonsense. The main arguments for race-abolition were (1) that studying race leads to racism, and (2) that there's no genetic basis for race."
I think the 1st point applies, though we will obviously disagree, I think it obvious that Coon was a little racist or at least "racialist" and that certainly did not help his case (not to mention his odd obsession with borderline-phrenological measurements). You miss a 3rd point: rather than genetics, Coon selected a bunch of arbitrary skeletal metrics, some of which are largely adaptive and plastic; others which are randomly variable, or vary little between individuals or races, or both and, with a few soft tissue traits, attempted to divine a convoluted race model (that is often at variance with reality). As for your 2nd point, Coon is quoted saying: "Thank you very, very much. You know, I never understood this genetics shit." Some anthropologist!
"Mediterranean morphology is not tied specifically or exclusively to the Neolithic. According to Jelinek (Curr. Anthropol., 1969), the Brno II skull found in the Czech Republic and dated to 23,680 BP is of Mediterranean type. That predates the Neolithic, and could very well represent the migration of haplogroup I carriers from West Asia and Southeastern Europe to Northwestern Europe."
That's just it! How the hell is a skull from Upper Paleolithic Bohemia "Mediterranean type?"
"Boas' position has been misrepresented and exaggerated:"
Ironically, by Corey Sparks and Richard Jantz, whose revisionist study attempted to prove Carleton Coon's older hypothesis by knocking down a strawman of Boas.
"As Holloway notes, 'Boas clearly states that his studies never claimed that there were no genetic components to head shape. ... The myth that the cephalic index was totally plastic and shaped by the environment was not something that Boas himself believed' (Holloway 2002:14622). [...] Boas's students who replicated and extended the immigrant study were equally clear on this point. Harry Shapiro, for example, concluded that 'the available evidence suggests that a given type is characterized by only a limited plasticity, and that the patterns of change are fixed by the nature of its fundamental structure' (Shapiro1939:199)."
Uuuhh... Hi! Can you please tell me where the hell I said that there is NO hereditary component to head shape, that CI is TOTALLY shaped by the environment, or that skull proportions are INFINITELY malleable? I never made such statements, so it is you who resort to strawmen. Cranial dimensions have significant genetic AND environmental factors; the ratio is probably determined by environment WITHIN hereditary constraints. So... yeah! The problem is the adaptive effect weakens correlation of CI with "race" and would thus tend to fuck up Coon's data. After all, even the minor discrepancy allowed by a conservative estimate of the degree of environmental adaptability transforms the Sicilian "Mediterranid" and the Jewish "Armenid"/"Dinarid" into a New York "Alpinid." ;) :p
As for the questions you did not address, you neglected to admit whether or not the assessment of European paleolithic/mesolithic continuity versus neolithic colonisation from the Near East matter is settled. (Which Coon himself seemed uncertain about. Are Dinarics UP types with Mediterranean admixture or just Mediterranean variants?) Nor did you even attempt to explain Coon's ludicrous notion that Europeans are largely descended from Neanderthals, Chinese and other Asiatics from Peking Man, Australoids from Java man, etc. Oh, and that whole bit about East Africans being Caucasoids (or part Caucasoid)? First off where is "East Africa?" Sudan? The Horn countries? The Chain o' Lakes, Serengeti, and Zanzibar Coast? Just WHO do you mean by "East Africans? Nilotic peoples (Nilo-Saharan speaking Dinka, Kikuyu, Masai, Nuer), East African Bantus (Luo & Tutsi, Swahili speakers), or Hamito-Nubians (Afro-Semitic speaking Beja, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Galla, Somali)? You need to be a bit more specific because all three groups are very different peoples. Of the "Hamito-Nubians" they are the only group that seem to have any real affinities to Europid peoples (aside from possessing superficially Europoid skeletal morphology, craniofacial features, or nose shape, and generally being lighter than the average sub-Saharan African), but it's not correct that the native population in the vicinity of the African Horn stem from Europoids (not counting minor but non-neglible South Arabian Caucasoid admixture in Semitic Ethiopians) because to do so smacks of Hamitic theory and only gives Afro-centrists license to flip it around and claim Egyptians, Arabs, Berbers, and Levantine Semites as "Black Africans." Are you going to
P.S. You might consider this "SPAM" or dismiss it as ad hominem, but believe it or not, I enjoy this debate, if only it means knocking down your hero Carleton Coon...
P.P.S. Sorry for the large number of posts. It's the stupid character limit. By your "piece of shit blog" I meant "piece of shit blogging service" but that's Google's fault, not yours.
Coon is well known on race forums which I think makes him in a target with 20/20 hindsight. While he made mistakes, I dont think he deserves to be treated as a joke.
The Brunn crania was classified as Atlanto- Mediterranean by Hooton, unfortunately Coon in TROE made the Northwestern Atlanto-Mediterrnaeans(primarily from Ireland) into Neanderthals, hence "Brunn" --named after the Brunn-Premosti Neanderthal(which is actually from the Balkans not Ireland besides).
Hooton had issues with Coon's UP's and Borreby's and later on Coon came to accept he was in error and changed it.
That fits the more archaic Mediterranean often called "Atlanto-Mediterranean", otherwise its essentially what Serg dubbed Eurafrican.
To Coon's credit, although largely unfortunately obscured in his book likely due to his own beliefs at the time obviously, but otherwise mainly by most forum members was that he did leave open the possibility back in 1939's TROE:
"This tall, longer-headed half of the race is longer faced, narrower nosed, and less delicate in bony structure than the other. It also seems to fall closer to such possible prototypes as Galley Hill and Combe Capelle from the Palaeolithic."
TROE, Chapter IV, section 14
By 1980/81, Coon did not believe that Neaderhtanls played a part in the UP's, which were to him by then, the same as the scaled down Neolithic to modern Europeans.
"The Upper Paleolithic Europeans were modern Caucasoids. During their span of 20,000 years, their bodies changed physically very little if at all, for their adjustments to their environment left nothing to be desired."
"There is little evidence that the Upper Paleolithic Europeans absorbed the Neanderthals that preceded them. Why the Neanderthals faded away is a mystery. One may postulate that they succumbed to diseases brought by their successors to which they had no genetic immunity, just as smallpox and tuberculosis decimated the American Indians; or one can suppose that they were hunted down by the invaders(which has also been done in modern times); or perhaps they died of crowding or of grief. (Is it possible that, because of phonemic limitations, they could not learn their invaders' languages? Or only with a poor accent?)
About the fate of the Upper Paleolithic hunters there is no mystery. They did not vanish with the mammoths on whose flesh they feasted and from whose ribs they built large oval houses on the steppes of Russia. They survived the Pleistocene, and their descendants in Europe and in Asia became Mesolithic salmon-seiners, Neolithic villagers, Bronze Age warriors, and Iron Age Vikings. They followed the reindeer to the edge of the ice, and, when it melted, they remained there. They were restless. After they had learned agriculture and cattle breeding from others like themselves who had come from the east, they expanded, migrating southward and eastward in many waves. One of those waves reached India and later spread to many other parts of the world."
"Racial Adaptations", C.S. Coon, 1982
>>> All of which are highly adaptive, even if bounded by hereditary constraints. [...] Also largely adaptive and plastic.
Those are standard skeletal measurements that are still used by anthropologists today. And Coon used plenty of others besides.
>>> Well since you made yourself the Supreme Arbiter on which anthropologists are relevant (and who is a "nobody" or obscure)
No, you're the one who did that by first calling Howells "obscure" when others consider him "one of the intellectual giants of the discipline of biological anthropology during the twentieth century", and then immediately afterward citing an anthropologist that nobody's ever heard of before.
>>> Well, it is socially acceptable to deny being a racist, but do you really think his teleological multiregionalism is not a tad racist?
Some people do, but Dienekes recently expressed disagreement:
"I also have issues with Stoneking's caricature of Carleton Coon's "candelabra" model. Saying that this model is not tenable today is one thing, but ascribing racist motivations behind it is another: [...] There is actually no good reason to ascribe racist motivations to Coon's model of human origins. It was simply an interpretation of the evidence (such as it was in his day). Coon's suggestion that different races crossed the sapiens threshold at different times did not imply superiority and inferiority. While he almost certainly believed in inherent differences between the races (as most scientists in his day did, and many still do), his views were definitely not based on an idea of Africans as having less time to evolve."
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/09/mark-stoneking-review-on-human-origins.html
>>> As for your 2nd point, Coon is quoted saying: "Thank you very, very much. You know, I never understood this genetics shit." Some anthropologist!
Salovesh again? That was allegedly in 1956. Genetics was shit back then, and it remained shit until well after Lewontin's time. As a physical anthropologist, Coon was under no obligation to cross over into that field, though eventually he did jump on the bandwagon and start making use of blood group data. If he'd had access to modern genetic data, he would have been thrilled at how well it corresponds to craniofacial data.
>>> That's just it! How the hell is a skull from Upper Paleolithic Bohemia "Mediterranean type?"
Um, because people from the Mediterranean migrated to Europe.
>>> The problem is the adaptive effect weakens correlation of CI with "race" and would thus tend to fuck up Coon's data.
None of Coon's classifications are based solely on cephalic index. He first proposed that Dinarics' brachycephaly could be due to Alpine admixture, and then later changed his mind. But he always recognized them as Mediterranean derived based on their overall appearance.
>>> As for the questions you did not address, you neglected to admit whether or not the assessment of European paleolithic/mesolithic continuity versus neolithic colonisation from the Near East matter is settled.
That's a stupid question. I linked to an article called "Migrationism Strikes Back", so obviously the matter isn't settled yet. But the tide seems to be turning back in Coon's favor, at least based on the most recent evidence.
>>> Nor did you even attempt to explain Coon's ludicrous notion that Europeans are largely descended from Neanderthals, Chinese and other Asiatics from Peking Man, Australoids from Java man, etc.
Those were plausible theories. So what? Archaic admixture is making a comeback too. And either way, it has no bearing on the data Coon compiled, as Howells correctly points out in his appreciation.
>>> Oh, and that whole bit about East Africans being Caucasoids (or part Caucasoid)?
Again, I linked to a page full of genetic and craniometric evidence showing that East Africans (Horners) have substantial Caucasoid admixture and morphological affinities. You can choose to ignore that evidence if you want, but it's not going away.
>>> I enjoy this debate, if only it means knocking down your hero Carleton Coon...
You haven't knocked anyone down, and Coon is not my "hero". I just don't have the blind hatred of him that you and others seem to have. I can reference his perfectly valid and still useful data, and appreciate everything he got right, despite the few errors he made. It's called being objective, rational and open-minded. You should try it some time.
Is this even "science?"
On Carleton's "racism" alleged or real, I am not making a statement as to the fame, popularity, or relevance of either Howells or Salovesh. (Though why you assume Salovesh to be a "race-denying nobody" when you do not know him baffles me.) To be perfectly honest, to me personally, Howells is still an "obscure" anthropologist, and so is Salovesh, equally so! (Who do I consider non-obscure anthropologists? Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Jared Diamond, C. Loring Brace and George W. Gill... Sure most of those people were "race deniers" so that automatically invalidates what they say, but incidentally, I found Gill's side in the linked PBS debate FAR more persuasive than Brace's. I feel that Brace may be well-meaning and his heart may be in the right place, but his statement is feel-good bullshit and undermines my ability to take him seriously as an anthropologist.)
But all that's besides the point! I have never heard of Howells, nor Salovesh, but I mention the latter because he actually had correspondence with Coon, unlike YOU, RR. That is assuming you do not have some kind of time machine. Do you? IF, Salovesh was not lying then CSC is racist (as his statements would reveal) and my worst suspicions about him are true.
"Those are standard skeletal measurements that are still used by anthropologists today. And Coon used plenty of others besides."
Really? Careful analysis of skeletal material: cranio-facial and post-skeletal, can provide an excellent description and is used by forensic anthropologists, for instance, though I am pretty sure the cephalic index in and of itself is largely dispensed with. In either case, for the sake of parsimony Coon could have dispensed with it altogether, like Sergi did, and been just as well if not better off. (Also, many of the finer osteological measurements would be extremely difficult or impossible to perform on living subjects, and seeing that most of the Coon racial classification was derived from people alive at the time, that kind of undermined his endeavor.)
"Some people do, but Dienekes recently expressed disagreement:"
Not to disparage Dienekes, but he is a dyed-in-the-wool apologist for Coon. Case in point, saying that "Coon's suggestion that different races crossed the sapiens threshold at different times did not imply superiority and inferiority," strikes me as baseless apologetics. We may not know for sure what Coon thought, but how is stating that some races transitioned to "modern humans" earlier than others (and thus evolved faster and arguably are more evolved) not implying superiority and inferiority? [Never mind the absurdity of believing that different branches of H. erectus would become H. sapiens independently, which even an elementary understanding of evolution reveals to be untenable.]
"...though eventually he did jump on the bandwagon and start making use of blood group data."
Funny, I thought you yourself commented on the unreliability of blood group data on this very blog [or was it your older site? can't remember which...], as its correspondence with "race" is very weak, and in fact, "race-deniers" point to it as "evidence" that race is fictional. Anyways, I would expect a self-respecting anthropologist to at least try to understand the genetic evidence. After all, what is race but ancestry, and genes correspond 100% with ancestry.
"Um, because people from the Mediterranean migrated to Europe."
Well, the way I see it to say that someone is "racially Mediterranean" can only mean one of two things: that they are actually from the Mediterranean (and not just a recent arrival there), or that they recently arrived from the Mediterranean (i.e. a neolithic colonizer). That is why I find the idea of calling a fossil skull from Central Europe dated to the Upper Paleolithic "Mediterranean" based on some arbitrary or superficial metrical similarities somewhat absurd. Then again, by your logic, virtually the entire aboriginal population of Europe is Mediterranean because most humans past through the "Mediterranean" area into Europe...
Also, since we were originally discussing Coon's allegation that Nordics derive from "Mediterraneans" (whatever that means), perhaps you should read your own web pages once in a while:
"Corded Nordic: The Nordic race is a partially depigmented branch of the greater Mediterranean racial stock. It is probably a composite race made up of two or more basic Mediterranean strains, depigmented separately or in conjunction by a progressive evolutionary process. ... In head and face proportions a resemblance is seen to the Corded-like Irano-Afghan sub-type, a resemblance which is enhanced if pigmentation differences are ignored. Both metrically and morphologically this individual is seen to be fully Mediterranean; there is no evidence of Upper Palaeolithic admixture."
[emphasis added]
"None of Coon's classifications are based solely on cephalic index. He first proposed that Dinarics' brachycephaly could be due to Alpine admixture, and then later changed his mind. But he always recognized them as Mediterranean derived based on their overall appearance."
Given that craniofacial measurements and other osteological anthropometrics are best performed on bare bones, this limited Coon to superficial measurements in most of his fieldwork. But had he simply disregarded the CI, or better yet, heeded the discoveries of Boas, et al on the non-hereditary influence on musco-skeletal traits he would not have made that error to begin with.
"I linked to an article called "Migrationism Strikes Back", so obviously the matter isn't settled yet. But the tide seems to be turning back in Coon's favor, at least based on the most recent evidence."
Yes, but since Coon was unclear on the matter, and appears to have contradicted himself, then your defense of him rests on an unfalsifiable premise. [Incidentally, I happen to lean towards neolithic replacement myself. For one thing, considering the expansion of Blacks throughout Africa into territories inhabited by Pygmies and Khoi-San, or Whites throughout the Americas into territories inhabited by Amerinds, I would expect something astonishingly similar happened in Europe with Near Eastern agro-pastoralists and indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.]
"Archaic admixture is making a comeback too."
Doubt it. After all, the general concensus is that Neanderthals and modern humans were different species, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. While this might not be definitively settled yet, the evidence strongly supports this conclusion (and other "archaics" were probably further from H. sapiens than Neanderthals were). Were Neanderthals and sapiens able to hybridize? They were almost certainly close enough to hybridize, but we are about equally certain that they were not close enough to produce viable offspring. Accordingly, any sapiens-Neanderthal hybrid would have been sterile like a mule/jennie or liger, and hybridisation would be a sort of "evolutionary dead end." Notwithstanding your claims of a comeback, there is a small minority, arguably a fringe, who endorses such a view, but even they are MOSTLY in agreement with the Out-of-Africa theory. They only disagree with an exclusively out-of-Africa origin, though I suppose we can get a more conclusive answer with the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. Either way, this "middle ground" is a far cry from Coon's ridiculous candelabra hypothesis.
"Again, I linked to a page full of genetic and craniometric evidence showing that East Africans (Horners) have substantial Caucasoid admixture and morphological affinities. You can choose to ignore that evidence if you want, but it's not going away."
Granted. Thanks for clarifying (other "East Africans" have some Europoid morphological traits, for instance orthognathism, among other more superficial Caucasoid-looking features in Nilotic populations). I am fully aware of the evidence and I do not "ignore" or deny it. I am also aware of the difference between similarities and affinities on one hand, and direct descent on the other. Of course even the very politically correct C. Loring Brace admits that the data from skeletal anthropometrics demonstrates the similarities between "Hamito-Nubian" peoples and Europids. [Incidentally, note that many superficial metrics and ratios, show similarities to sub-Saharan Africans, but those are also the traits that are highly adaptive and malleable. Brace et al used "non-adaptive" traits and found the very conclusions you claim. Point conceded!] Of course, morphological similarities often indicate a probable relationship, but they do not necessarily prove it. Case in point, the Ainu bear a superficially Europoid morphological phenotype but they are actually of Australoid ancestry. The fact is, "Horners" are neither Caucasians nor Negroes (for lack of a better term). They are actually an intermediate "third branch" who, resemble Europids via convergent evolution in situ but did not directly descend from them. (Of course, the concept of a "Negroid race" that comprises all of sub-Saharan Africa is untenable in light of the Out-of-Africa theory, which if true, means that Africans should be the most diverse group as they are the oldest humans on the planet. Indeed, that is the case!) This intermediate position did not arise out of hybridisation, but the evidence suggests that "Horners" are more related to non-African groups (specifically West Eurasians) than to some African groups.
But once again, you miss my point! The problem with Coon's contention is that he mistakenly considers "East Africans" (i.e. Hamites) to be "darkly pigmented Caucasoids" like South Asians, with some possible Negroid admixture and this is not the case. Perhaps, this was racist thinking on his part (i.e. the so-called "Hamitic theory"). Essentially, the "Hamitic theory" was a sort of "reverse-Afrocentricism" even though it was mostly developed well before Afrocentricism got started. Coon may have wished to claim all of Northeast Africa down to the equator as "Caucasoid" for such reasons. (And he certainly would not have been alone. Many others made the same claim well before him.) Considering that the Hamitic doctrine was popular before Coon's time I would not be surprised. Granted I have my bias and you have yours. I have the preconceived notion that Coon was a racist and you are convinced that this could not possibly be the case. Of course his classification of East Africans as "Caucasoid" or at least "Caucasoid-derived" rather than a convergent group, could simply be a consequence of limiting himself to a simplistic 5-race model. Since he assumed only 5 major "races" (subspecies in his terms), the location of Horners means they were probably not Australoid or Mongoloid, and given their metrical-morphological similarity to Caucasoids were not Capoid or Congoid, so were called "Caucasoid" out of process of elimination.
"You haven't knocked anyone down..."
So sayeth you! And if anything, I did not knock him down, he was already "down."
"...and Coon is not my "hero"."
Suuure! But you really take criticism of him personal.
"I just don't have the blind hatred of him that you and others seem to have. I can reference his perfectly valid and still useful data, and appreciate everything he got right, despite the few errors he made. It's called being objective, rational and open-minded. You should try it some time."
Well, personally whether or not Coon was actually a racist might not have the relevance I seem to give it. Nevertheless, Coon's "far-right-leaning" views on race leads me to at least take his claims with a grain of salt, much as Brace's "far-left-leaning" views on race leads me to at least take his claims with a grain of salt. However, I think problems with Coon go beyond his personality or ideology. His methodology and conclusions are pretty flawed.
About "his perfectly valid and still useful data" (note your words "perfectly valid" make no sense since even you acknowledge that he made at least a "few errors" but "perfectly valid" data implies inerrant), and "everything he got right despite the few errors" you have yet to demonstrate one thing that he got right that is not painfully obvious. You mentioned six things: that East Africans (i.e. "Horners") have Caucasoid ancestry; that Jews have European admixture; that Northeastern Europeans have a small Asian component; that Nordics derive from Mediterraneans; and something about his ideas about prehistoric migrations into Europe making a comeback. Oh yeah, and that craniofacial data corresponds with genetic information.
Regarding the first five claims made (in the order that I listed them): (1) not quite [Coon claimed that the indigenous population of the Horn of Africa was of Caucasoid derivation, and while some of the population (i.e. Semitic-speaking Ethiopians) do have minor-but-significant Caucasoid admixture probably via Southern Arabia, "Horners" do not derive from "Caucasoids" as such.]; (2) duh; (3) again, duh; (4) this remains to be seen (in light of weak or medium demic diffusion, "Nordics" would be among the least Mediterranean and note that Coon distinguished between "Mediterranean" and "Upper Paleolothic" type); (5) again this is contentious, but even Coon was unsure and quite conflicted.
Regarding the last point, the evidence from forensic anthropology does indeed yield a good (though far from perfect) corelation between phenotype and genotype, i.e. between anthropometric data and skeletal morphology on one hand and genetics on the other, which allows a competent forensic anthropologist to classify according to the major races, however:
"The principal-coordinate and neighbor-joining analyses of Smith's mean measure of divergence (MMD), based on trait frequencies, indicate that 1). the clustering pattern is similar to those based on classic genetic markers, DNA polymorphisms, and craniometrics; 2). significant interregional separation and intraregional diversity are present in Subsaharan Africans; 3). clinal relationships exist among regional groups; 4). intraregional discontinuity exists in some populations inhabiting peripheral or isolated areas. For example, the Ainu are the most distinct outliers of the East Asian populations. These patterns suggest that founder effects, genetic drift, isolation, and population structure are the primary causes of regional variation in discrete cranial traits."
"Craniometric traits show a level of among-region differentiation comparable to genetic markers, with high levels of variation within populations as well as a correlation between phenotypic and geographic distance. Craniometric variation is geographically structured, allowing high levels of classification accuracy when comparing crania from different parts of the world."
Note that "significant interregional separation" and diversity are present in Subsaharan Africans, and that clinal relationships exist among regional groups, and that "intraregional discontinuity exists in some populations inhabiting peripheral or isolated areas," but that "high levels of classification accuracy" is attained "when comparing crania from different parts of the world." In other words, osteological differentation is observable among isolated groups or in comparing populations from disparate regions in the world, but not so within most "races." This sort of renders Carleton Coon's futile attempt to discern ethnic origins from craniometric traits in The Races of Europe rather moot. Note also that per Jared Diamond, anthropologists can not reliably determine whether Europeans are descended from mesolithic hunter-gatherers or neolithic agro-pastoralists from the Near East based on skeletal remains, as opposed to Africa, where anthropologists can determine that the agricultures can discern based on skeletal remains that Bantu farmers displaced Khoi-San hunter-gatherers. This debunks Coon's hypothesis that he can divide Caucasoids into "Upper Paleolithic" and "Mediterranean" types. (From the chapter "How Africa Became Black" Guns, Germs, and Steel)
Finally, you do not win any argument by declaring yourself "objective, rational and open-minded." But since you have a habit of making strawmen (though your misunderstanding of some of my points may have been an honest mistake on your part), I am curious about your reply to Hippocrates exposed. I noticed you attacked his non-specific criticism of Carleton Coon, but you completely ignored his much better and more substantive argument:
Coon postulated a trans-continental "Mediterranean Race" which not only included southern Europeans and (here Hippocrates would agree) north Africans and near Easterners, but also "Mediterranean" Britons, Irish, etc.
I am fairly confident that genetic studies would show that a "Mediterranean" Briton is genetically similar to a "Nordic" Briton, and genetically more dissimilar to a "Mediterranean" Italian, never mind non-European "Mediterraneans."
Likewise, a Neapolitan "Mediterranean" is going to be more genetically similar to other (southern) Italians, regardless of if they're "Dinaric" or "Alpine" or whatever, than to "Mediterranean" Britons or Afro-Asiatics.
>>> I have never heard of Howells, nor Salovesh, but I mention the latter because he actually had correspondence with Coon
If you've never heard of Howells, you really have no business discussing anthropology. He's a giant in the field. Salovesh is an unknown who (allegedly) had a single encounter with Coon as a graduate student in 1956. Howells was Coon's lifelong colleague and friend.
>>> Funny, I thought you yourself commented on the unreliability of blood group data on this very blog
That's right, I did. So what? Blood groups were all they had to work with back then, and so that's what Coon eventually used. Stop making irrelevant statements.
>>> Well, the way I see it to say that someone is "racially Mediterranean" can only mean one of two things:
The way you see it is wrong.
>>> Yes, but since Coon was unclear on the matter, and appears to have contradicted himself, then your defense of him rests on an unfalsifiable premise.
How did Coon contradict himself?
>>> Doubt it. After all, the general concensus is that Neanderthals and modern humans were different species ... (and other "archaics" were probably further from H. sapiens than Neanderthals were).
Modern humans do have Neanderthal and other archaic admixture. This is a fact:
X-linked haplotype of Neandertal origin in non-Africans
Archaic Denisovans contributed to modern Melanesians
>>> Case in point, the Ainu bear a superficially Europoid morphological phenotype but they are actually of Australoid ancestry.
The Ainu resemble neither Caucasoids nor Australoids. They're morphologically closest to other Northeast Asians, as expected:
http://i52.tinypic.com/333bjb6.png
>>> The fact is, "Horners" are neither Caucasians nor Negroes (for lack of a better term). They are actually an intermediate "third branch"
No, Coon was correct. Horners are indeed a mix of Caucasoids and Negroids, according to Cavalli-Sforza (among others):
"...East Africans (Ethiopian and neighbors) are also clearly separate. Estimation of admixture by standard methods...has given values of about 60% African and 40% Caucasoid, using sub-Saharan Africans as African 'parents' and Southwest Asians as Caucasoid parents. Because very similar results are obtained using North Africans as Caucasoid parents, it is difficult to tell whether Southwest Asians or North Africans contributed the Caucasoid genes. Perhaps both did. Using the simple Fst approach...for calculating admixtures, average gene frequencies from Nilotic speakers as prototypes of African ancestors, as well as gene frequencies of North Africans...as Caucasoid ancestors, one obtains 53% of African (and 47% Caucasoid) contribution for Tigre, 57% for Amhara, 56% for Cushitic."
>>> Suuure! But you really take criticism of him personal.
Not as personally as you take his work.
>>> Nevertheless, Coon's "far-right-leaning" views on race leads me to at least take his claims with a grain of salt, much as Brace's "far-left-leaning" views on race leads me to at least take his claims with a grain of salt.
I would not call Coon "far-right-leaning", but that's an interesting comparison because I have no problem referencing Brace's data either. I can disagree with his political beliefs and some of his interpretations without trying to discredit everything he's ever done, because I don't have the irrational hatred of him that you have of Coon.
>>> (note your words "perfectly valid" make no sense since even you acknowledge that he made at least a "few errors" but "perfectly valid" data implies inerrant)
He made some errors in his interpretations of data (at least in part because he didn't have things like carbon dating, the molecular clock, Y- and mtDNA, or population structure at his disposal). What I -- and Howells -- claim to still be "perfectly valid" is the data itself. Please try to follow.
>>> you have yet to demonstrate one thing that he got right that is not painfully obvious.
They may seem "painfully obvious" to us now, but that wasn't always the case. Someone had to be the first to make those statements and back them up with better evidence than "duh". Hell, there are scientists today who are just figuring out that Central Asians are a mix of Caucasoids and Mongoloids. They should have read Coon. He knew.
>>> Coon claimed that the indigenous population of the Horn of Africa was of Caucasoid derivation, and while some of the population (i.e. Semitic-speaking Ethiopians) do have minor-but-significant Caucasoid admixture probably via Southern Arabia, "Horners" do not derive from "Caucasoids" as such.
Horners have between 40% and 60% Caucasoid genetic ancestry (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994; Wilson et al. 2001). Coon recognized this from their craniofacial morphology and proposed an East African branch of the Caucasoid race. It has not yet been established whether that ancestry is indigenous to East Africa or represents gene flow from West Asia. Most geneticists think a combination of the two.
>>> (in light of weak or medium demic diffusion, "Nordics" would be among the least Mediterranean and note that Coon distinguished between "Mediterranean" and "Upper Paleolothic" type)
We've already been over this. Mediterranean morphology predates the Neolithic, and Nordics are derived from that regardless of the time frame (which Coon could only speculate about in 1939 because of limited technology). As Crimson Guard mentioned above, Coon misclassified Bruenns based on their robustness, and later came to agree with Hooton's assessment:
"Certainly, the most archaic morphological type of the Mediterranean subrace is that known as Upper Palaeolithic, sometimes also called Galley Hill or Combe Capelle (or, by Coon, the 'Bruenn race') from type fossil finds in Europe, and also frequently referred to as Atlanto-Mediterranean (Deniker). This exceptionally long-headed type is notable for the great size of the brain-case and its rugged bony construction. The face is commonly long and massive, but it may be rather short, perhaps oftenest when bodily stature is below medium. The jaws are nearly always deep and heavy."
http://dienekes.110mb.com/texts/hootonmed/
>>> "2). significant interregional separation and intraregional diversity are present in Subsaharan Africans; 3). clinal relationships exist among regional groups;"
The same is true genetically, so I don't know what point you're trying to make.
>>> This sort of renders Carleton Coon's futile attempt to discern ethnic origins from craniometric traits in The Races of Europe rather moot.
That's a straw man. Coon did not "attempt to discern ethnic origins". He simply divided Caucasoids into different types based on their craniofacial similarities. These types usually overlapped multiple different ethnic groups.
>>> I am curious about your reply to Hippocrates exposed. I noticed you attacked his non-specific criticism of Carleton Coon, but you completely ignored his much better and more substantive argument:
That's not a better argument. People cluster the way they do because they've been isolated from others by distance and geographic barriers. That doesn't preclude morphological similarities with genetic roots resulting from common descent. Native Americans cluster separately from East Asians, yet both share similar morphology because of common descent. And blue-eyed people -- from Afghanistan to Ireland -- all have the same gene for that trait. Likewise, it's certain that the genes for distinct sets of craniofacial traits are shared by the people who possess them (Nordics and Mediterraneans, for example).
Is this even "science?"
Yes, this is the science of raciology. I congratulate Racial Reality/Italianthro for his efforts.
"Modern humans do have Neanderthal and other archaic admixture. This is a fact:"
Zealous much? Because you're clearly grasping at straws!
While I admit the possibility that I may be wrong, sorry, I remain unconvinced! In the course of a scientific revolution it is extremely rare to retrogress to a prior theory once the evidence points away from it. Over time, the "splitter" paradigm has surpassed the "lumper" paradigm. A recent single origin for anotomically modern humans in Africa remains the concensus. The standard taxonomy now elevates Neanderthal man and anatomically modern humans to the status of distinct species: Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, whose lineages were separated over 500,000 years ago. According to this paradigm, Homo sapiens have zero Neanderthal ancestry (owing to direct admixture) because hybridisation, even if it had occured, would not produce fertile offspring. If we found conclusive evidence that such admixture did occur, then we would be forced to revert the taxonomy to Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens. Hell! Heidelberg man would probably have to be demoted to a sub-species. Such a discovery would turn the tide back towards the "lumper" paradigm, it would force us to slow our assessed rate of evolutionary change within genus Homo and redraw the hominid phylogenetic tree. If evidence for hybridization is conclusive enough, then indeed we would be forced to do all the aforementioned, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Given that we currently have good enough reason to conclude that Neanderthal and modern man were different species and thus not interfertile, the default assumption is that admixture is impossible and Occam's razor forces us to consider alternative explanations for these alleged discoveries. (Should the evidence prove to be true and the alternatives fail, then we would be forced to rethink our theories on human origins.)
First off, the status of the Denisova hominid is controversial. Considering how recently it was discovered, we should expect classification efforts to be thus far inconclusive. In fact, there is a possibility that the Denisova find belongs to Homo sapiens.
Is the Denisova mtDNA sequence modern?
A NOTE ON THE DENISOVA CAVE mtDNA SEQUENCE:
"Nevertheless, this finding argues for modern human status of the Denisova sample and against a new species designation as suggested from the original analysis (Krause, et al., 2010). Variations in mtDNA in populations and their significance given the natural history of mitochondria have been noted by Ballard and Whitlock (2004) with a caution of their use to build phylogenetic relationships."
As for alternatives to the alleged "Neanderthal" genes in modern human populations, I noticed that you seem to think that Dienekes Pontikos is a reliable source when he is not an anthropologist and his blog is not a peer-reviewed journal or scientific publication. That said, see what your man Dienekes thinks about this alleged "Neanderthal" admixture. He doesn't even believe it yet, ironically, you cite his blog as "evidence."
Regarding the alleged Neanderthaloid origin of X-chromosome haplotype B006, first of all, unlike mtDNA and Y-chromosomal analysis, X-chromosome haplotyping is still in its infancy. Second of all, it is not the case that X haplotype B006 is nonexistent in Africans, only rare. Finally, nowhere in the referenced study is it claimed that X-chromosomal haplotype B006 was actually found in Neanderthal! The researchers did find alleles in the Neanderthal genome that appeared to match with some on X-hap B006, but then I am sure perfectly "African" chromosomes would have alleles that match parts of the genome. After all, humans and chimpanzees (who are not interfertile, even to the limited extent that horses and donkeys or lions and tigers are) share 98% of their genome, so modern humans and neanderthals must share more than that!
From the study:
"Our laboratory did not participate in the determination of the Neandertal sequence. The admixed X-linked haplotype of Neandertal origin we report was suspected to descend from a non-African lineage well before the advent of the Neandertal genome (Zietkiewicz et al. 2003)."
Essentially, the research team arrived at the preconceived conclusion that the X-linked haplotype was Neanderthal (or other "archaic") in origin back in 2003 based on the fact that they can only find a "non-African" origin, but in light of the genomic research of Green, Paabo, et al, they assumed their prima facie conclusion to be correct. Of course, their initial failure to find the aforementioned haplotype in African populations is part of the hypothesis. Should further sampling of SSA populations turn up more of the haplotype, it kind of fucks the conclusion. But what if their initial findings are further corroborated? Does it prove Neanderthal admixture? Not necessarily. Note that in Dienekes' blog he asks, first off, why the gene flow had to be Neanderthal to human and not the other way around. (This is probably a moot point as it would mean cross-species gene flow either way, but it underscores the fact that there is no evidence of the haplotype in question in Neanderthals.) Dienekes further argues that the relevant question is not why there is "Neanderthal" genetic material in AMH, but why this haplotype is lacking in sub-Saharan populations, and further why (sub-Saharan) Africans bear ancient lineages lacking in non-African populations.
Regarding the prior research of Green, Paabo, et al.
Tales of Neanderthal admixture in modern Eurasians
Deep ancestors of human DNA compatible with structured African population
There are alternative explanations to account for the findings without resorting to admixture between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals or other archaic populations, namely the "structured population model" or "Recent out of Africa: Multiple Archaic Populations" model answers the challenges apparently posed to the "Recent out of Africa: Single Origin Population" model. Of course, it is also possible that the Neanderthal DNA sample used in the genomic research was contaminated with modern human DNA, as Paabo himself admitted occurred earlier in his research, but that's another question. So I would not be so cocky as to pronounce a highly controversial hypothesis "fact."
RR, you may have a problem with reading comprehension, but the irony of citing Dienekes' blog as evidence for a hypothesis that he does not necessarily believe in is lost on you! But even so, your whole point is a distracion! Let's assume for the sake of argument that the evidence is not in error, the DNA sample was not contaminated, that we could some how rule out African population sub-structure that may explain apparent "archaic" lineages in human sub-populations. At best that would mean a "Multi-Regional Recent Admixture" model as advocated by Green and Paabo. According to their model, non-African humans have about 1-4% Neanderthal ancestry (conservative estimate) but 9% Neanderthal ancestry at most! Worse still, this admixture would be, on average, homogenously distributed throughout "ex-African populations" (even though evidence indicates that some East Asian populations apparently have slightly more of this "Neanderthal" admixture than some European populations). This is a FAR cry from the Carleton Coon Candelabra model, in which Caucasoids, for instance are native to the same area where Neanderthals lived and are partial descendents of Neanderthals. (Just swap "Mongoloids" and Peking-type H. erectus or Australoids and Java-type H. erectus with Caucasoids and Neanderthals respectively.) Your desperate attempt to salvage Carleton Coon's model of human origins and evolution by referencing a hypothetical account of modern human small-scale admixture with Neanderthals/Denasovans is a red herring. [Never mind the problem that Caucasian populations are not significantly more Neanderthal than other ex-African populations which should be contrary evidence to the Green-Paabo hypothesis. If AMH and Neanderthals are not separate species, but interfertile subspecies who can freely hybridize, why are Caucasians, whose ancestors would have had more contact with Neanderthals than other humans, have no more admixture on average than Asians, Australoids, or Amerinds?]
"The way you see it is wrong."
Well, if THAT is the case, then the only alternative is to conclude that ALL "Caucasoids" are "Mediterranean type" because all Caucasian peoples ultimately either stayed within the Mediterranean periphery or traveled into Europe, Central Asia, or the Indian sub-Continent from the Mediterranean periphery, which makes the designation "Mediterranean type" virtually redundant. (I suppose a possible exception would be Uralic or Turanid populations whose ancestors migrated from Siberia or Central Asia, but arguably they are "peripheral types.")
"How did Coon contradict himself?"
Oh geez... Well let's see, he stated that "Dinaric" variants were stablized hybrids of "Alpines" with Mediterranid strains. Later he decided that they were just a certain Mediterranean sub-type. He altered some of his other classifications. He was apparently skeptical about most of what he wrote in The Races of Europe, and, well Crimson Guard gave you an example I think. Maybe if you did not deify the man so much, you could at least admit that he might have made a mistake or changed his mind... the point I was trying to make is that it is difficult to determine if he got something right or wrong when he himself changed his mind, or was conflicted, or espoused an ambiguity. (Case in point Upper Paleolithic versus Near Eastern first farmer ancestry.)
"The Ainu resemble neither Caucasoids nor Australoids. They're morphologically closest to other Northeast Asians, as expected:"
Let's see... The Ainu have deep-set eyes, prominent noses (relative to East Asians), dark, coarse, plentiful hair on the head and body, and they generally lack epicanthic folds. East Asiatic peoples are characterized by facial flatness, smaller noses, straight and smooth black hair, relatively sparse facial and body hair, and usually presence of epicanthic folds. You seem to be having a reading comprehension problem or else could use a good dictionary, so that you can look up "superficially." I suppose in the crude "Negroid-Caucasoid-Mongoloid" scheme, Caucasoids are morphologically intermediate in almost every respect and are therefore a "median type," so it should not be surprising if superficially Europoid phenotypes are found in relatively unrelated groups. I suppose some Polynesian groups, the Maori in particular, are a better example. The point is that the correspondence between genotype and phenotype is not perfect and parallel or convergent evolution within the human species does occur.
As to the Australoid affinities of the Ainu, consider that the Ainu, like their Jomon ancestors, have sundadont dental type, as do the Andaman Islanders, Nicobar Islanders, Papuans, Australian Aborigines, Melanesians, and many "negrito" tribes. The Japanese (like their Yayoi ancestors), Koreans, Han Chinese, Mongols, Siberian Turks, Tungusic peoples, and Tibeto-Burmans possess sinodont dentition. Austronesians (Filipinos/Malays/Micronesians/Polynesians) and some mainland Southeast Asians possess both dental patterns. (With Filipinos and Formosan aboriginals being the most sinodont.) Also, the Ainu belong largely to Y-chromosome haplogroup D, which is found sporadically throughout the Far East but concentrated in the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
Granted, there is gene flow between populations, in this case more from the Japanese to the Ainu than vice versa, and that bridges the phenotypic and genotypic gap, but note that even autosomal genetic plots (such as those of Cavalli-Sforza) which do group the Ainu with Northeast Asians plot them as outliers.
These Ainu look more "Asian" but note the robust facial features and thick beards!
Another Ainu man
Ainu couple
Europoid-looking Ainu man
"Not as personally as you take his work.
...I would not call Coon "far-right-leaning", but that's an interesting comparison because I have no problem referencing Brace's data either. I can disagree with his political beliefs and some of his interpretations without trying to discredit everything he's ever done, because I don't have the irrational hatred of him that you have of Coon."
Pray explain where you get such psychic talents! I find it remarkable that you not only know the exact nature of my issue with Coon but his political stance! Do you presume yourself to be a mind-reader?
"What I -- and Howells -- claim to still be "perfectly valid" is the data itself."
But by, "the data itself" did you bother to verify it independently? Afterall, some of his data and descriptions appear to be at variance with his plates. I am sure he made some errors, but you obviously presume him to be inerrant without having bothered to independently corraborate his research. How fascinating!
"They may seem "painfully obvious" to us now, but that wasn't always the case. Someone had to be the first to make those statements and back them up with better evidence than "duh". Hell, there are scientists today who are just figuring out that Central Asians are a mix of Caucasoids and Mongoloids. They should have read Coon. He knew."
I don't know, I think the fact that Coon discovered the European contribution to Jews, for instance did not exactly make him a visionary. Nor does finding Bjork-looking individuals in Northeastern and far-Northern Europe make one a visionary. It's funny you mention Central Asians because, IIRC, Coon over-estimated the Caucasoid component (as he tended to do), classifying them as "peripheral Caucasoids" rather than seeing them as about 50-50.
I suppose a possible exception would be Uralic or Turanid populations whose ancestors migrated from Siberia or Central Asia, but arguably they are "peripheral types."
They are irrelevant as they are Caucasoid-Mongoloid hybrids. Their Caucasoid ancestors were no different from other Caucasoids in terms of origins.
"The same is true genetically, so I don't know what point you're trying to make."
The point I was making is that, except for Africa, where human biodiversity is most abundant, genotypic and phenotypic variation within a racial area is clinal at best, making the attempt to divide the population into discrete sub-racial types, particularly on the basis of arbitrary phenotypic traits, futile.
"That's a straw man. Coon did not "attempt to discern ethnic origins". He simply divided Caucasoids into different types based on their craniofacial similarities. These types usually overlapped multiple different ethnic groups."
Really? So then what use was his work, other than proposing meaningless phrenological types, what practical point did his research serve? That is a key question to ask as to whether Coon's research was science.
"That's not a better argument. People cluster the way they do because they've been isolated from others by distance and geographic barriers."
Way to completely ignore the argument! That is, precisely the basis of genotypic (and usually phenotypic, subsequently) clustering. Location, location, location. People will share more in common with their neighbors (especially if they share a language or ethnic identity) than they will with some distant groups that share some arbitrarily selected phenotypic trait.
"Native Americans cluster separately from East Asians, yet both share similar morphology because of common descent."
The picture is a bit more complex than the one you paint. Amerindians are morphologically intermediate between Caucasians and East Asians, but obviously closer to East Asians. Contrary to simplified racial typologies, American Indians are not "Mongoloid." They descend from a proto-Eurasian population, but on the Eastern end and are therefore closer to Asiatic than European populations. However, Amerinds are not direct off-shoots of "Mongoloids" rather, they just happen to share a lot of common ancestry. (I think that viewing human biodiversity in the rigid taxonomy of Coon inhibits your ability to grasp more complex racial affinities.)
"And blue-eyed people -- from Afghanistan to Ireland -- all have the same gene for that trait."
Actually, the genetics of eye colour are somewhat more complex than you present it but that is a fair point. It is known that brown eye colour is caused my melanins in the iris, and genes for different gradients of iris melanization produce different shades of brown. Lipochromes produce various shades of blue, green, and grey. Light eyes lack melanin and are coloured by the spectral scattering effect of lipochromes. Hazel eyes are sometimes partially depigmented but also have lipochromes, providing a mixed colour of brown with blue, green, and/or grey. Albino eyes have neither pigments nor lipochromes and are a pale purple. The mutations for all eye colours other than brown only occurred a few times in the life time of the species, but the traits probably evolved over many generations. Hence, if you see any two people with blue eyes, there is a very high probability that you can find a common ancestor, though this is not certain, as there are many variations on the traits coding for lipochromes. That said, eye colour is unique in that it is one of astonishingly few traits that are immune to environmental or adaptive factors (as opposed to skin tone, bodily dimensions, proportions, and shapes, musculature, etc.), and because it is mostly selection-neutral. (Having more melanin confers better protection against glaring sun, while less sunny climates relax the selection, but there is no apparent survival advantage for the various shades of blue and green. Lighter eye colours evolved due to random mutations and sexual selection.) Also, eye coulour is a more discrete ("binary") trait. Not to mention, non-brown eye colours are a Europid-specific traits. As such, there can not be a more perfect "racial tracer." The problem is that it is a false analogy.
"Likewise, it's certain that the genes for distinct sets of craniofacial traits are shared by the people who possess them (Nordics and Mediterraneans, for example)."
Come on, are you really that stupid, or are you just being deliberately obtuse? Considering that metrical and morphological traits: craniometrics, cranio-facial configuration, limb proportions, other anthropomorphic or musco-skeletal traits; all have significant environmental influence, being as they are all adaptive or "plastic" to varying degrees, to the extent that they are hereditary, they are subject to natural selection. You can not observe phenotypic traits and automatically infer an ancestral relation without knowing the underlying genetic mechanism. Afterall, people from Scandinavia and the Western Balkans as well as Nilotic people tend to be very tall and often slender. Does that mean they belong to the same "racial" group? [Although the relation between high stature in a Scandinavian and a Croatian MIGHT be genetic in nature, you can not connect that to East Africa!] What about zebras and tigers? Are they part of the same species because they are both striped mammals? Now do you see how retarded basing racial classification on arbitrarily selected phenotypic patterns is?
However, Amerinds are not direct off-shoots of "Mongoloids" rather, they just happen to share a lot of common ancestry.
Amerinds are almost totally direct off-shoots (of course with some changes in morphology and genetics due to drifts, population expansions, environment and the passage of time) of some early Mongoloid types, which would in Asia later be replaced/diluted by later Mongoloid types. Whatever non-Mongoloid DNA (e.g., mtDNA haplogroup X) pure Amerinds have is very limited.
Left Race Realist, you need to make your comments a lot less long and boring. Three full posts devoted solely to archaic admixture is way too many, not to mention veering off topic. If you can't fit your replies into a MAXIMUM of three posts TOTAL, then do some editing, because that will be your limit from now on. Regarding the question, suffice to say that archaic admixture has been detected in modern humans, so Coon wasn't entirely wrong. I never said anything about "salvaging his model of human origins".
>>> the only alternative is to conclude that ALL "Caucasoids" are "Mediterranean type" because all Caucasian peoples ultimately...traveled into Europe...from the Mediterranean
No, that's an illogical conclusion. Mediterranean types came from the Mediterranean region, but not all people from the Mediterranean region were of Mediterranean type. Even the Neolithic brought Alpines and other types into Europe.
>>> he stated that "Dinaric" variants were stablized hybrids of "Alpines" with Mediterranid strains. Later he decided that they were just a certain Mediterranean sub-type.
That's a revision, not a contradiction. A good scientist is always willing to revise his work.
>>> Let's see... The Ainu have blah blah blah....
I'm not interested in your amateur opinion. In the craniofacial study I linked to, Ainu cluster with fellow Northeast Asians (and their genes tell the same story). On the other hand, Horners show both craniofacial and genetic affinities with Caucasoids. So your analogy is way off base.
>>> I find it remarkable that you not only know the exact nature of my issue with Coon but his political stance! Do you presume yourself to be a mind-reader?
No, just a plain old reader.
>>> I am sure he made some errors, but you obviously presume him to be inerrant without having bothered to independently corraborate his research. How fascinating!
Everybody makes mistakes. But Howells -- a world-renowned anthropologist (whom you'd embarrassingly never heard of) -- says that Coon's Races of Europe is "still regarded as a valuable source of data". Period.
>>> It's funny you mention Central Asians because, IIRC, Coon over-estimated the Caucasoid component
I don't think he ever attempted to quantify their admixture. Besides, Central Asia is a big place. Some populations are more Caucasoid than others.
>>> So then what use was his work, other than proposing meaningless phrenological types, what practical point did his research serve?
What a stupid question. Coon's work, like that of all physical anthropologists, contributes to our understanding of human variation.
>>> The picture is a bit more complex than the one you paint. Blah blah blah....
The point is that Native Americans come from East Asia and retain East Asian features, yet cluster separately. So the argument against Nordic-Mediterranean affinities doesn't hold water.
>>> Actually, the genetics of eye colour are somewhat more complex than you present it but that is a fair point. Blah blah blah....
OK, that's all I needed to hear. You can spare me the dissertation.
>>> Now do you see how retarded basing racial classification on arbitrarily selected phenotypic patterns is?
No, but I see how retarded you are. Stature and limb ratios are highly adaptive and not specific to a single race. And zebras and tigers are entirely unrelated species! European types are based on non-adaptive craniofacial morphology that's specifically Caucasoid. A better example would be German Shepherds and Siberian Huskies, who are different colors and live in different regions, but have similar craniofacial morphology that points to common descent.
"Regarding the question, suffice to say that archaic admixture has been detected in modern humans, so Coon wasn't entirely wrong. I never said anything about "salvaging his model of human origins"."
No. The results of your studies (which are too recent to have been sufficiently peer reviewed) are preliminary. Nevermind that the studies of Green and Paabo are hyped on Wikipedia and around the blogosphere. They suggest "archaic" genetic admixture. This has been far from proven. Most likely archaic genetics are the result of existing population structure in African H. sapiens. This is nonetheless revolutionary (it partly overhauls standard OOA theory), and its implication, that living humans are almost two sub-species, may be more controversial and un-PC than Neanderthaloid admixture. [Incidentally, in light of the current consensus on hominid taxonomy, there are no "archaic Homo sapiens," at least from outside of Africa.] Ancient population structure or even subspecies of H. sapiens in Pleistocine Africa is a far cry from the Carleton Coon Candelabra model. And even if the admixture WERE due to direct admixture with Neanderthals, that is still far removed from Coon's particular multiregionalism.
"Mediterranean types came from the Mediterranean region, but not all people from the Mediterranean region were of Mediterranean type. Even the Neolithic brought Alpines and other types into Europe."
Okay, but notwithstanding what you deem "illogical" you have yet to meaningfully define "Mediterranean type."
"That's a revision, not a contradiction. A good scientist is always willing to revise his work."
I see you are retreating into semantics rather than a meaningful argument. Very well...
"I'm not interested in your amateur opinion. In the craniofacial study I linked to, Ainu cluster with fellow Northeast Asians (and their genes tell the same story). On the other hand, Horners show both craniofacial and genetic affinities with Caucasoids. So your analogy is way off base."
Very well, but are you also choosing to ignore the evidence from your eyes? The Ainu certainly do not look "Asiatic" but you disregard dental evidence as well as non-recombining DNA that point to the Ainu's Australoid affinities on the basis of one craniofacial study and autosomal genetic clustering, which is quite fuzzy. Of course Australoids and East Asians share ancestral roots via the "Coastal Clan."
"No, just a plain old reader."
How humble of you to deny those psychic talents that you previously implied!
"Everybody makes mistakes. But Howells -- a world-renowned anthropologist (whom you'd embarrassingly never heard of) -- says that Coon's Races of Europe is "still regarded as a valuable source of data". Period."
Notwithstanding Howells' lofty credentials, arguing from authority changes nothing. Can you name anyone else who considers TROE relevant? Considering that Howells was a close personal acquaintance, you can not rule out bias.
"I don't think he ever attempted to quantify their admixture. Besides, Central Asia is a big place. Some populations are more Caucasoid than others."
I'm pretty sure he labeled Turanids "Caucasoid" but that may be a rather minor point.
"Coon's work, like that of all physical anthropologists, contributes to our understanding of human variation."
Like ALL physical anthropologists? Surely you're joking! Putting aside your very high regard for Coon, I think you would agree that the work of Nazi anthropologists, for instance, did not contribute to our understanding of human variation.
"The point is that Native Americans come from East Asia and retain East Asian features, yet cluster separately. So the argument against Nordic-Mediterranean affinities doesn't hold water."
Well the physical similarities between Amerinds and East Asians are somewhat superficial, but they do result largely due to their affinities, which I do not deny, but "Nordics" and "Mediterraneans" are both Caucasoid, so DUH! No shit they have affinities! To state that they have a special (phyletic) affinity not shared with other Caucasoid groupings is nonsensical and meaningless.
"OK, that's all I needed to hear. You can spare me the dissertation."
Well, it is okay for you to get all pompous and arrogantly boast about your massive anthropological knowledge, but when you get something wrong and I know something that you do not, you wish me to "spare the dissertation"? Fine by me!
"No, but I see how retarded you are."
Oh, how cute, an ad hominem! You resorted to personal insults, so I guess you win... NOT!
"Stature and limb ratios are highly adaptive and not specific to a single race."
To an extent, yes. That's exactly my point. But the same applies to some extent to craniofacial features.
"And zebras and tigers are entirely unrelated species!"
That is called an analogy. If you do not know what that is, look it up in the dictionary.
"European types are based on non-adaptive craniofacial morphology that's specifically Caucasoid."
Actually, craniofacial morphology is not entirely non-adaptive. Of course forensic anthropology can and does find identifying features for the major races, it tends to fall apart when applied to "sub-types." Do Coon's European phrenological types actually exist outside of his own imagination and that of his devoted fanboys?
"A better example would be German Shepherds and Siberian Huskies, who are different colors and live in different regions, but have similar craniofacial morphology that points to common descent."
Actually, German Sheperds and Huskies are not that closely related. They are both classed as working dogs, but the Siberian Huskie is a spitz-type dog, closer to the Pomeranian than to a German Sheperd.
>>> They suggest "archaic" genetic admixture. This has been far from proven.
The point is that there are many geneticists, as well as modern anthropologists, who propose archaic admixture in modern humans, so it isn't just "Coon's outdated nonsense" as you've been trying to claim. It's a legitimate hypothesis that's worth pursuing, which Coon did as best as he could at the time.
>>> you have yet to meaningfully define "Mediterranean type."
That's what anthropology books are for. Read one.
>>> I see you are retreating into semantics rather than a meaningful argument. Very well...
No, I'm refuting your idiotic claim. "Contradiction" and "revision" are two different words with entirely different meanings. A scientist proposing a theory, and then years later revising it, is not "contradicting himself". He's just being a good scientist.
>>> The Ainu certainly do not look "Asiatic"
Of course they do: One, two, three, four, five, six.
>>> you disregard dental evidence as well as non-recombining DNA that point to the Ainu's Australoid affinities
Dentally, East Asians and Austro-Melanesians tend to cluster close to each other, so that doesn't prove that the Ainu in particular have "Australoid affinities". And genetically, the Ainu belong to typical Japanese/Northeast Asian haplogroups.
>>> Can you name anyone else who considers TROE relevant?
That has more to do with contemporary race-denial than with anything being wrong with Coon's work. The typology of his era was still used well into the 60s and 70s by people like Briggs, Jelinek, Angel etc. Then Lewontin's fallacy and the politics surrounding it messed everything up.
>>> I'm pretty sure he labeled Turanids "Caucasoid"
Coon doesn't use the term "Turanid", but he cites Von Eickstedt who called it "a hybrid mongoloid-white racial type". A quick Google search through TRoE on your part could have spared us this pointless discussion.
>>> I think you would agree that the work of Nazi anthropologists, for instance, did not contribute to our understanding of human variation.
Don't be stupid. They were propagandists, not legitimate anthropologists.
>>> To state that they have a special (phyletic) affinity not shared with other Caucasoid groupings is nonsensical and meaningless.
You talk about "choosing to ignore the evidence from your eyes", but that's exactly what you're doing. Nordics resemble Mediterraneans more than they do Alpines or East Baltics, and the data attest to those affinities.
>>> but when you get something wrong
I didn't get anything wrong, since you admitted it was a "fair point". Then you went off on some endless tangent. And I've never boasted about having "massive anthropological knowledge" either.
>>> You resorted to personal insults, so I guess you win... NOT!
Nah, I won way before that. As for resorting to personal insults, you've been doing that since you got here, first against Coon, then Howells, and then me.
>>> To an extent, yes. That's exactly my point. But the same applies to some extent to craniofacial features.
No, there's no comparison. Your "point" is absurd.
"The first two, skin color and limb elongation, are adaptations to the intensity of solar radiation -- the first directly so and the second indirectly. Since this is so clearly the case, we should expect those two traits to covary, as indeed they tend to do, throughout the world. Evidently, traits that are distributed in conjunction with the graded intensity of their controlling selective forces will be poor indicators of population relationships.... Two dozen craniofacial measurements were taken on each individual used. The raw measurements were converted into C scores and used to produce Euclidean distance dendrograms. The measurements were principally of adaptively trivial traits that display patterns of regional similarities based solely on genetic relationships."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.1330360603/abstract
>>> That is called an analogy. If you do not know what that is, look it up in the dictionary.
No, it's called a stupid analogy. However "plastic" you believe craniofacial traits are, they're nowhere near as "arbitrary" for classification purposes as the coat patterns of animals, which are usually adaptations for camouflage. Shared stripes are a coincidence. Shared skull shape points to common descent.
>>> Do Coon's European phrenological types actually exist outside of his own imagination and that of his devoted fanboys?
They're quantifiable through craniofacial measurements, so the answer is yes. Imagination, devotion and phrenology have nothing to do with it.
>>> Actually, German Sheperds and Huskies are not that closely related.
That's the whole point, genius. They cluster separately yet share craniofacial morphology. Kind of like East Asians and Native Americans. Or Mediterraneans and Nordics. Get it?
And FYI, Huskies are not close to Pomeranians. You're mistaken (again).
"The point is that there are many geneticists, as well as modern anthropologists, who propose archaic admixture in modern humans, so it isn't just "Coon's outdated nonsense" as you've been trying to claim. It's a legitimate hypothesis that's worth pursuing, which Coon did as best as he could at the time."
You say this but (repeatedly) ignore the fact that those modern geneticists/anthropologists who propose so-called "archaic admixture" propose something entirely different from what Coon does.
"That's what anthropology books are for. Read one."
Funny, virtually none of the MODERN anthropological literature I read gives any credence to Coon's typology. Then again, it is probably just ultra-left, PC, "race-denying" nonsense. But even the early 20th century texts, when phrenology and physiognomy were very much fashionable, disagree relentlessly. Should we use Deniker, Ripley, Sergi? Why is Coon inherently better? They all used some fairly arbitrary measurements but even more arbitrary demarcations. Anthropology has moved on, why can't you?
"No, I'm refuting your idiotic claim. "Contradiction" and "revision" are two different words with entirely different meanings. A scientist proposing a theory, and then years later revising it, is not "contradicting himself". He's just being a good scientist."
What-fucking-ever! I really could give two shits about the definition of "contradiction" versus "revision." The point is, Coon's revisions "contradicted" his earlier view. That is not a statement on the reliability of his works, but merely pointing out that he believed different things at different times in his career, so to say that he was "right" is unfalsifiable because he said different things at different times. Funny, you relentlessly insult my intelligence, but you lack basic word comprehension.
"Of course [the Ainu] do [look Asiatic]"
About that. The Ainu are NOT pure, unmixed descendents of their Jomon forebearers. Many of the modern Ainu are part Japanese, so many Ainu resemble them and share their genes. [Notwithstanding your belief in "pure races" in this day and age.] Of your photos, all of the individuals in photos two, four, five, and six look "Oriental" though the third woman from the foreground in #6 also looks kind of Amerindian. But the Ainu in #3, which I already showed you do not, and of the Ainu in #1, the man looks like a "de-pigmented" Australian Aborigine, but the remaining individuals do look rather Asian. Of course, nearly all of the Ainu have their own unique features. Really, they are a "racial isolate." In all fairness, this is a rather irrelevant tangent. Though this is what happens when you try to "racialize" everyone by shoving them into a finite number of hermetically sealed racial categories. (Case in point, Ethiopians/Somalis, are they "Negroes" or "Caucasians"? Neither! They belong to their own racial group.)
"Dentally, East Asians and Austro-Melanesians tend to cluster close to each other, so that doesn't prove that the Ainu in particular have "Australoid affinities"."
Mr. (Miss?) "Racial Reality" AKA "Evil Euro" the self-proclaimed anthropologist (who is actually an anonymous blogger) has never heard of sundadonty or sinodonty.
"That has more to do with contemporary race-denial than with anything being wrong with Coon's work."
Funny! You like to pretend it's all political when almost everybody rejects Coon, both so-called "race-denialists" on the "Left" and most white nationalists on the "Right" reject Coon as irrelevant, obsolete, and useless. Only a small, dedicated following on the Internets, revolving around Dienekes Pontikos, his lapdog (you), and some white nationalists seem to take him seriously.
"The typology of his era was still used well into the 60s and 70s by people like Briggs, Jelinek, Angel etc."
Carleton Coon was the Karl Marx of anthropology in that he produced highly ideological and political works in the guise of science and started a devoted cult following of some of his friends and associates, his pupils (like J. Lawrence Angel), and now guys like Pontikos. Like Marxism, his school of thought is laughed at by both mainstream academia and even most white nationalists (who are probably non "race-deniers").
"They were propagandists, not legitimate anthropologists."
Well, then the onus is on you to distinguish between "propagandists" and "legitimate anthropologists." You have yet to provide a criterion.
"You talk about "choosing to ignore the evidence from your eyes", but that's exactly what you're doing. Nordics resemble Mediterraneans more than they do Alpines or East Baltics, and the data attest to those affinities."
Sorry, I do not share your fantasy world where Coon's Platonic sets are readily observable. Of course so-called "Nordics" and "Mediterraneans" resemble each other by virtue of the fact that both are Caucasians, but notwithstanding Coon's attempts to isolate archetypal individuals into his phrenological types, people tend to "average out." Consequently "Nordish" people within a given geographical area or ethnic group will resemble each other regardless of whether their closest physiognomic type (according to Coon, but not necessarily according to Deniker, Ripley, Sergi, or Angel) is "Nordic," "Borreby," "Dalo-Nordic," "Baltid," etc. [And within a "Medish" group, whether their physiognomic type is Mediterranid, Apline, Dinaroid, etc.] But what "data" attests to that? Have you attempted to independently verify his findings or do you just take his work at face value? (Your own photo-composites strongly suggest that Europoid phenotypic variance does not fit into neat canonical types.) Where is this elusive data you always mention? And how come modern genetics has yet to find clusters pertaining to Coon's physiognomic types?
"And I've never boasted about having "massive anthropological knowledge" either."
Please take your pretensions of humility and modesty and kindly go fuck yourself with them.
"Nah, I won way before that."
Declaring yourself the winner, I see?
"As for resorting to personal insults, you've been doing that since you got here, first against Coon, then Howells, and then me."
Once again, your lack of reading comprehension is revealed. I never insulted Howells. I merely called him "obscure" but did not attack his intellect or character. While I did say some rather unflattering things about your god Carleton Coon, that was unfortunate, as it distracted from my better points. As for insulting you, I feel no remorse for attacking, a whiny, effeminate, coward who lacks the testicular fortitude to reveal his (or her or their) identity, or for putting down a pseudo-intellectual idiot savant whose only tactic is to parrot anthropological works from the earlier half of the last century, cherry pick modern genetic studies, or insult his/her opponents. You can't even come up with a good pseudonym! Calling yourself "Racial Reality" demonstrates the limits of your creativity.
...Two dozen craniofacial measurements were taken on each individual used. The raw measurements were converted into C scores and used to produce Euclidean distance dendrograms. The measurements were principally of adaptively trivial traits that display patterns of regional similarities based solely on genetic relationships..."
Incidentally, Coon made no attempt to discern "adaptive" from "non-adaptive" craniofacial traits, so pray explain what the fuck is your point. Not to mention, you are dogmatically certain that certain traits are invariably "genetic tracers" while others are mere "adaptations." Both you and Coon failed to grasp the complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors, plus Mendelian rules of inheritance and evolutionary processes in producing the varied human phenotypes.
"They're quantifiable through craniofacial measurements, so the answer is yes."
Depends who is doing the measuring!
"And FYI, Huskies are not close to Pomeranians. You're mistaken (again)."
Actually, both Huskies and Pomeranians are "Spitz-type dogs" but German Shepards are not. So FUCK YOU!
Now, RR/EE, if Carleton Coon was not racist and in no way ideologically motivated, please explain the following quote from him:
"If Africa was the cradle of mankind, it was only an indifferent kindergarten. Europe and Asia were our principal schools."
Note that was a statement by Coon himself, not a "slander" from the "race-denying" Salovesh (who is probably a J00).
Also, please explain what you were doing on Egypt Search calling everyone there "Afronuts," apes, monkeys, (or other non-human primates, usually but not necessarily higher primates), niggers, and "slaves" while posting laughably amateurish links under the name "Evil Euro" (so as not to discredit "Racial Reality").
>>> those modern geneticists/anthropologists who propose so-called "archaic admixture" propose something entirely different from what Coon does
Irrelevant. I didn't say that Coon's hypothesis was correct, just that it was legitimate at the time, and that investigating and theorizing about archaic admixture in modern humans remains legitimate today.
>>> But even the early 20th century texts...disagree relentlessly. Should we use Deniker, Ripley, Sergi? Why is Coon inherently better?
They disagree about relatively minor points. Coon actually cites the work of all of the anthropologists you mentioned and more, improving upon it in certain cases, which is precisely what makes him "better". As Howells says:
"Carleton Coon's 'The Races of Europe' (1939) began as a revision of W. Z. Ripley's 1900 work but ended as a new opus that used every scrap of published information on living populations and prehistoric human remains -- and much recorded history besides."
>>> so to say that he was "right" is unfalsifiable because he said different things at different times
In the case of Dinarics, which is what led to this discussion, Coon already describes them as "Mediterranean derivatives" in TRoE, so his later revision about how they became brachycephalic is irrelevant. He was right either way.
>>> Case in point, Ethiopians/Somalis, are they "Negroes" or "Caucasians"? Neither! They belong to their own racial group.
No, they don't. I've already demonstrated that Horn Africans are a mix of Caucasoids and Negroids. Don't repeat that false statement again.
>>> the self-proclaimed anthropologist (who is actually an anonymous blogger) has never heard of sundadonty or sinodonty.
Still doesn't make the Ainu Australoid:
• Sinodonts, Sundadonts and Undefined
• Dental Clustering of the Ainu
• Craniofacial Clustering of the Ainu
• Genetic Clustering of the Ainu
And I've never claimed to be an anthropologist. Stop lying.
>>> Funny! You like to pretend it's all political when almost everybody rejects Coon, both so-called "race-denialists" on the "Left" and most white nationalists on the "Right" reject Coon as irrelevant, obsolete, and useless.
All of which has to do politics, not science. Do you even read what you write before posting it?
>>> Carleton Coon was the Karl Marx of anthropology in that he produced highly ideological and political works in the guise of science and started a devoted cult following
No, the Marxist cult in anthropology consists of Montagu, Lewontin and their devoted followers.
>>> Well, then the onus is on you to distinguish between "propagandists" and "legitimate anthropologists." You have yet to provide a criterion.
In the case of your (idiotic) example, propagandists are sponsored by totalitarian regimes that start world wars and commit genocide, while legitimate anthropologists are not. Hope that helps.
>>> Sorry, I do not share your fantasy world where Coon's Platonic sets are readily observable.
Try opening your eyes. Clearly, Mediterraneans most resemble Nordics, Alpines most resemble Borrebies, and Dinarics most resemble Norics, regardless of where in Europe they're from.
>>> And how come modern genetics has yet to find clusters pertaining to Coon's physiognomic types?
Do you suffer from memory loss? I already covered that with the East Asian/Native American, blue eyes and dog breed discussions.
>>> so pray explain what the fuck is your point.
My point is that your "analogy" equating limb proportions with craniofacial morphology is retarded.
>>> if Carleton Coon was not racist and in no way ideologically motivated, please explain the following quote from him:
That's related to his multiregional hypothesis whereby primitive human ancestors were supposed to have left Africa prior to becoming sapiens. He's barely talking about modern humans, let alone human races.
>>> Actually, both Huskies and Pomeranians are "Spitz-type dogs" but German Shepards are not.
Regardless, Huskies and Pomeranians belong to entirely different genetic clusters. Pomeranians actually share more ancestry with German Shepherds than they do with Huskies.
>>> coward who lacks the testicular fortitude to reveal his (or her or their) identity [...] You can't even come up with a good pseudonym! Calling yourself "Racial Reality" demonstrates the limits of your creativity.
Says the anonymous guy who calls himself "Left Race Realist". "Racial Reality" is not a pseudonym. It's the name of my website and blog, which is not uncommon to use as a moniker. What's your excuse?
>>> Also, please explain what you were doing on Egypt Search calling everyone there [names]
Please explain what you've been doing stalking me for years. Debates get heated and tempers flare (you know that all too well). I guess you missed all the similar name-calling by the Afrocentrists.
>>> kindly go fuck yourself
This is my blog. If anyone's going to go fuck themselves, it's you. In fact, since you're starting to repeat yourself and falling back on personal attacks and lies even more than before, I think your time here is just about up. You're now restricted to a SINGLE post for your replies, which had better contain all new material and zero insults.
>>> Declaring yourself the winner, I see?
That's right...by a landslide.
Carleton Putnam (December 19, 1901 – March 5, 1998) was an American businessman, biographer, writer, and segregationist. He graduated from Princeton University in 1924 and received a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Columbia Law School in 1932. He founded Chicago & Southern Airlines in 1933, which in 1953 was merged with Delta Air Lines. He would later serve as chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines and hold a seat on its board of directors until his death.
Born to a prominent family of Yankee background, his mother Louise Carleton Putnam, was the daughter of New York publishing magnate George W. Carleton. Paternally, he was a lineal descendant of American Revolutionary War general Israel Putnam. He was also the cousin of physical anthropologist Carleton Coon, with whom he corresponded closely regarding theories of anatomical and biological differences between human races.[3] He was raised as part of the American Episcopal Church and remained a lifelong member.
His best known written work is Race and Reason, an apology of racial segregation that originated in a letter he wrote to President Dwight Eisenhower protesting the end of segregation in U.S. public schools.[4] Psychologist Henry Garrett wrote the introduction.[5] In this book, Putnam wrote:
In the next 500,000,000,000 years I would be quite prepared to concede the possibility the Negro may, through normal processes of mutation and natural selection within his own race, eventually overtake and even surpass the white race. [...] When the Negro has bred out his limitations over hundreds, or thousands, of years, it will be time enough to consider absorbing him in any such massive doses as would be involved in the South today. (p.53)
The mulatto who was bent on making the nation mulatto was the real danger. His alliance with the white equalitarian often combined men who had nothing in common save a belief that they had a grudge against society. They regarded every Southerner who sensed the genetic truth as a bigot [...]. Here were the men who needed to be reminded of the debt the Negro owed to white civilization. (p.117)
He also wrote a biographical book on Theodore Roosevelt's youth that was praised by Edmund Morris, the author of the best known biography of that president. Putnam admired Roosevelt's belief that "Teutonic (and) English blood is the source of American greatness".[4]
Carleton Putnam died of pneumonia on Mar. 5, 1998. He was survived by his wife, Esther Mackenzie Willcox Auchincloss, a daughter, three grandchildren, a stepdaughter, and three step-grandchildren. He was previously married to Lucy Chapman Putnam.
Read the article “In Ways Unacademical”: The Reception of Carleton S. Coon’s
The Origin of Races"
This paper examines the controversy surrounding anthropologist Carleton S.
Coon’s 1962 book, The Origin of Races. Coon maintained that the human sspecies was divided
into five races before it had evolved into Homo sapiens and that the races evolved into sapiens
at different times. Coon’s thesis was used by segregationists in the United States as proof that
African Americans were “junior” to white Americans and hence unfit for full participation in
American society. The paper examines the interactions among Coon, segregationist Carleton
Putnam, geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and anthropologist Sherwood Washburn. The
paper concludes that Coon actively aided the segregationist cause in violation of his own
standards for scientific objectivity.
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