AAA Statement on Race

In 1998, the American Anthropological Association issued an official statement declaring that clearly demarcated, biological races don't exist, which is supposed to represent "the contemporary thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists". This irresponsible exercise in PC pandering is constantly cited by uninformed people looking to discredit the reality of race.

Here are the three main flaws with the statement:

1) All but the first two paragraphs discuss social aspects of race (i.e. racism), going into detail about racial pseudo-theories and discrimination from colonial times to the Holocaust. It's interesting but it doesn't belong in a statement regarding the scientific aspects of race.

2) The brief paragraph that actually deals with anthropology emphasizes the overlapping across biological populations of single, adaptive traits like skin color and hair form, but it makes no mention whatsoever of skeletal structure and its uses in determining racial affinity in the field of forensic anthropology.

3) The other scientifically oriented paragraph delves into population genetics (not the AAA's field) to argue that large within-group variation renders any between-group variation meaningless. This may have seemed true back in the 70s when the field was still in its infancy, but today it's rejected as Lewontin's fallacy:

In popular articles that play down the genetical differences among human populations, it is often stated that about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups. It has therefore been proposed that the division of Homo sapiens into these groups is not justified by the genetic data. This conclusion, due to R.C. Lewontin in 1972, is unwarranted because the argument ignores the fact that most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors.

[...]

There is nothing wrong with Lewontin's statistical analysis of variation, only with the belief that it is relevant to classification. It is not true that "racial classification is...of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance". It is not true, as Nature claimed, that "two random individuals from any one group are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world", and it is not true, as the New Scientist claimed, that "two individuals are different because they are individuals, not because they belong to different races" and that "you can't predict someone's race by their genes". Such statements might only be true if all the characters studied were independent, which they are not.

[...]

This article could, and perhaps should, have been written soon after 1974. Since then many advances have been made in both gene technology and statistical computing that have facilitated the study of population differences from genetic data. The magisterial book of Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza (13) took the human story up to 1994, and since then many studies have amply confirmed the validity of the approach. Very recent studies (14,15) have treated individuals in the same way that Cavalli-Sforza and Edwards treated populations in 1963, namely by subjecting their genetic information to a cluster analysis thus revealing genetic affinities that have unsurprising geographic, linguistic and cultural parallels. As the authors of the most extensive of these (15) comment, "it was only in the accumulation of small allele-frequency differences across many loci that population structure was identified."

Here's a collection of recent genetic studies that have identified racial clusters:

• Wilson et al. (2001)
• Calo et al. (2001)
• Rosenberg et al. (2002)
• Hua Tang et al. (2005)
• Nan Yang et al. (2005)
• Agrawal et al. (2005)

Caucasoid Affinities of Somalis

It's been well documented that Ethiopians share a substantial amount of their ancestry with Western Eurasians (Caucasoids), but less talked about is the similar position of Somalis.

Anthropology

When the nonadaptive aspects of craniofacial configuration are the basis for assessment, the Somalis cluster with Europeans before showing a tie with the people of West Africa or the Congo Basin.

[...]

As our data show, the people of the Horn of Africa are craniofacially less distinct from a spectrum of samples marginally including South Asia and running all the way from the Middle East to northwest Europe than they are to any group in sub-Saharan Africa.

Brace et al. "Clines and clusters versus 'Race:' a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile". Am J Phys Anthro, 1993.

Genetics

The most distinct separation is between African and non-African populations. The northeastern-African — that is, the Ethiopian and Somali — populations are located centrally between sub-Saharan African and non-African populations.

[...]

The fact that the Ethiopians and Somalis have a subset of the sub-Saharan African haplotype diversity — and that the non-African populations have a subset of the diversity present in Ethiopians and Somalis — makes simple-admixture models less likely; rather, these observations support the hypothesis proposed by other nuclear-genetic studies (Tishkoff et al. 1996a, 1998a, 1998b; Kidd et al. 1998) — that populations in northeastern Africa may have diverged from those in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa early in the history of modern African populations and that a subset of this northeastern-African population migrated out of Africa and populated the rest of the globe.

+ 13 = Somalis

• 1-7 = Sub-Saharan Africans (Negroid)

• 8-11 = Sub-Saharan Africans (Khoisanid)

Δ 22-25 = Caucasoids (N. Europe and Mid-East)

Tishkoff et al. "Short Tandem-Repeat Polymorphism/Alu Haplotype Variation at the PLAT Locus: Implications for Modern Human Origins". Am J Hum Genet, 2000.

Racial Types

Related: Semitic West Eurasian Ancestry in Africa, Ancient Egyptians and Nubians Were Caucasoid

'Star Wars' Stereotypes

Amusing Flash page parodying the ethnically questionable characters from the most recent Star Wars trilogy:

http://www.flakmag.com/flash/swdvd.html

Most Violent Countries

Scotland tops list of world's most violent countries

By Katrina Tweedie
Times Online

September 19, 2005

A UNITED Nations report has labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America.

England and Wales recorded the second highest number of violent assaults while Northern Ireland recorded the fewest.

The study, based on telephone interviews with victims of crime in 21 countries, found that more than 2,000 Scots were attacked every week, almost ten times the official police figures. They include non-sexual crimes of violence and serious assaults.

Violent crime has doubled in Scotland over the past 20 years and levels, per head of population, are now comparable with cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and Tbilisi.

The attacks have been fuelled by a "booze and blades" culture in the west of Scotland which has claimed more than 160 lives over the past five years. Since January there have been 13 murders, 145 attempted murders and 1,100 serious assaults involving knives in the west of Scotland. The problem is made worse by sectarian violence, with hospitals reporting higher admissions following Old Firm matches.

David Ritchie, an accident and emergency consultant at Glasgow's Victoria Infirmary, said that the figures were a national disgrace. "I am embarrassed as a Scot that we are seeing this level of violence. Politicians must do something about this problem. This is a serious public health issue. Violence is a cancer in this part of the world," he said.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, head of the Strathclyde Police's violence reduction unit, said the problem was chronic and restricting access to drink and limiting the sale of knives would at least reduce the problem.

The study, by the UN's crime research institute, found that 3 per cent of Scots had been victims of assault compared with 1.2 per cent in America and just 0.1 per cent in Japan, 0.2 per cent in Italy and 0.8 per cent in Austria. In England and Wales the figure was 2.8 per cent.

Scotland was eighth for total crime, 13th for property crime, 12th for robbery and 14th for sexual assault. New Zealand had the most property crimes and sexual assaults, while Poland had the most robberies.

Chief Constable Peter Wilson, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, questioned the figures. "It must be near impossible to compare assault figures from one country to the next based on phone calls," he said.

"We have been doing extensive research into violent crime in Scotland for some years now and this has shown that in the vast majority of cases, victims of violent crime are known to each other. We do accept, however, that, despite your chances of being a victim of assault being low in Scotland, a problem does exist."

Link

Argentinean Italians Are Mostly Southern

Migration from Southern Italy to Argentina: Calabrians and Sicilians (1880-1930)

Cacopardo et al. (1990)
Studi Emigr

ABSTRACT: The study analyzes Italian emigration to Argentina from Sicily and Calabria between 1880-1930, compared with out-migration flows from Piedmont. The concepts of cultural patrimony and of migratory strategy are used to measure the different potentials and job opportunities in the Argentinean labor market as well as in the Italian context for those returning home. Considering the high proportion of returnees, a positive or negative correlation between region of origin and of destination can be proposed. Southern Italians indicate a more permanent settlement. The authors conclude that the Argentinean society in its Italian component is the result of Southern rather than Northern influences.

Link

Here are some photos of the Calabrian community in Argentina (click to enlarge):






Source

More on the King Tut Reconstructions

We've seen the recent French reconstruction of King Tut. Now let's compare it to the Egyptian and American ones done at the same time, the latter with no prior knowledge of the race or identity of the individual being reconstructed. They're the first ever Tut reconstructions based on CT scans of his mummy, and therefore considered to be the most accurate to date.

Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass notes that "The results of the three teams were identical or very similar in the basic shape of the face, the size, shape and setting of the eyes, and the proportion of the skull." All three teams identify Tut as a Caucasoid North African, and Hawass remarks on the striking resemblance their models bear to ancient portraits of the boy pharaoh.

[ click images to enlarge ]


French Reconstruction


Egyptian Reconstruction


American "Blind" Reconstruction

RECONSTRUCTION TEAMS

French:
- Jean-Noël Vignal, forensic expert, Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale, Paris
- Elisabeth Daynes, anthropological sculptor, Atelier Daynes, Paris

Egyptian:
- Khaled Elsaid, biomedical engineer and team leader

American:
- Susan Antón, physical anthropologist, New York University, New York City
- Michael Anderson, forensic sculptor, Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, Connecticut

Guns, Germs & Steel on PBS

PBS just aired a three-part documentary based on Jared Diamond's best-selling book Guns, Germs, and Steel, which outlines the role geography has played in shaping human history. You should try to catch it in reruns because it's very thought-provoking. But if you can't, there's a lot of information available at the show's website, including detailed summaries, full transcripts and a neat section called "The World" that analyzes global climates and resources by continent.

Episode One: Out of Eden

Diamond believes the blueprint for global inequality lies within the land itself, its crops and animals. [...] [He] realized that the development of successful and productive farming, starting nearly 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, was the critical turning point in the origins of global inequality. From this point on, one group of people — the natives of Eurasia — would have a head start on the path to civilization.

Successful farming provides a food surplus, and allows some people to leave the farm behind and develop specialized skills — such as metal-working, writing, trade, politics, and war-making. Plus, the simple geography of the continent of Eurasia — one coherent landmass spread on an east-west axis, with universal latitudes and climates — allowed these technologies and ideas to spread beyond the Middle East with ease.

More

Episode Two: Conquest

So, when presented with a copy of the Bible on November 16th, 1532, Atahuallpa throws the alien object to the floor, prompting a furious and surprise attack from the conquistadors. The combined impact of mounted troops, gunpowder and sharpened steel lead to a massacre, and Atahuallpa is personally seized by Pizarro himself.

In a matter of hours, the Inca Empire lies in ruins. But the story of Eurasian triumph isn't over. [...] Native Americans fell victim to European germs — infections which they had never encountered before. And Diamond realizes that European diseases like smallpox were a fatal inheritance of thousands of years of mammal domestication — the lethal gift of livestock.

More

Episode Three: Into the Tropics

As the settlers traveled further north, life suddenly became a lot harder. The foundations of their success, their crops and animals, refused to grow. They were forced to barter for food from their neighbours. And they started to fall ill with a mysterious and terrifying fever. It was a complete reversal of the usual pattern of European conquest.

Jared realizes that, unlike elsewhere in the world — where Europeans had landed in a temperate zone and traveled from east to west, maintaining similar climates — here in Africa, Europeans landed in the south and migrated north, moving through latitude zones and experiencing radically different climates. [...] Temperate crops such as wheat simply can't survive in a tropical climate. Nor can European animals — plagued by the diseases which thrive in the Tropics.

More

Uselessness of Blood Groups

Certain people continue to draw conclusions about ancestry from frequencies of blood groups and other blood-related genes, a common practice decades ago when the field of population genetics was still in its infancy. However, David Goldstein, Professor of Genetics at Duke University, stated in a recent interview that "blood groups are not now considered a good marker for population relationships, and they provide very little information about individual ancestry."

Here are four blood markers once used to measure African admixture in Southern Europeans, and the specific reasons why they aren't reliable for this purpose:

HbS (sickle cell)

African admixture in Sicily has been long suspected because of the presence of the sickle gene. Nevertheless, the degree of African admixture cannot be derived from the study of HbS frequency, since this gene was most likely expanded by the selective pressure of malaria, for a long time endemic to the region. We have examined 142 individuals from the Sicilian town of Butera (12% sickle trait) to search for other markers of the globin gene cluster less likely to be selected for by malaria. The TaqI polymorphism in the intervening sequences between the two gamma genes is informative. We have found only two instances of this African marker (TaqI(-)) among 267 normal chromosomes, demonstrating that the admixture occurred at a much lower level than previously thought. [Ragusa et al. 1992]

Fy(a-b-) (Duffy-null)

The Duffy system is also a single locus with two antigens, Fy a and Fy b. The only rare phenotype is Fy(a-b-), which has a higher frequency in countries where there is a high incidence of Plasmodium falciparium malaria. This phenotype gives a degree of immunity to the disease because the malarial parasite requires Duffy antigens to enter the red cells. Duffy antibodies are almost exclusively IgG. This system is named after the family of the antibody producer, Duffy. [BloodBook.com]

GM and KM allotypes

Fulani and Masaleit, sympatric tribes in eastern Sudan, are characterized by marked differences in susceptibility to Plasmodium falciparum malaria. To determine whether the two tribes differ in the frequency of immunoglobulin GM/KM allotypes, which are associated with immunity to several pathogens, serum samples from 50 Fulani and 50 age- and sex-matched Masaleit subjects were allotyped for several GM/KM determinants. The distribution of GM phenotypes as a whole, as well as a particular combination of KM and GM phenotypes, differed significantly between the two tribes (P = 0.03). These data suggest that GM allotypes may contribute to the genetic aetiology of malaria. [Pandey et al. 2007]

cDe (Rhesus)

But note that the cDe gene is nevertheless present in a fraction of the gene pool almost everywhere in the world. [...] Does it follow that once upon a time everybody in sub-Saharan Africa was homozygous for cDe, and in the rest of the world nobody had this gene? Should Europeans, Asiatics, and Americans who carry the cDe gene be presumed to have some Negro ancestry? There is no basis whatsoever to think so. The gene cDe is almost cosmopolitan in distribution, though for some unknown reason it reaches its highest frequency in Africa. [Dobzhansky, 1962]

Frequencies of the cDe gene in various populations (after Mourant 1954):

EUROPE Spaniards ..... 3.7% English ....... 2.8% Germans ....... 2.6% Danes ......... 1.8% Italians ...... 1.6% Basques ....... 0.5% AFRICA Bushmen ...... 89.0% Hutu ......... 62.9% Shona ........ 62.7% S.A. Bantu ... 59.6% Kikuyu ....... 59.5% Egyptians .... 17.3%

ASIA S. Chinese .... 4.1% E. Pakistan ... 3.9% AUSTRALASIA Aborigines .... 8.5% Javanese ...... 6.5% Papuans ....... 2.0% Marshallese ... 0.5% AMERICA Navajo ....... 28.0% Eskimos ....... 2.1%

Updated 11/03/2009

Geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sfroza likes to toe the left-wing party line by denying the existence of race and promoting anti-racism with oft-quoted statements like these:

The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise. [...] [My research is] expected to undermine the popular belief that there are clearly defined races, [and] to contribute to the elimination of racism. [...] The idea of race in the human species serves no purpose.

But his less-often quoted description of the genetic map from his book The History and Geography of Human Genes belies the "official" position he publicly endorses:

The color map of the world shows very distinctly the differences that we know exist among the continents: Africans (yellow), Caucasoids (green), Mongoloids (purple), and Australian Aborigines (red). The map does not show well the strong Caucasoid component in northern Africa, but it does show the unity of the other Caucasoids from Europe, and in West, South, and much of Central Asia.

There may be other scientists who put up a PC front like this to keep controversy at bay. But unfortunately, they provide ammunition to uninformed laymen with an anti-race agenda.

Link

Study: Human Ancestors Originated in Asia

By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News, May 31, 2005

Three newly discovered primate species that lived 30 million years ago suggest that our first ancestors originated in Asia and not in Africa, challenging the well-known "Out of Africa" theory about human evolution.

The actuality could be something a bit more complicated, such as "Out of Asia into Africa and Back to Asia," since some researchers now think Asian primates journeyed to Africa, where they evolved into humans, who then traveled both in and out of Africa.

According to a study published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, numerous fossil teeth for the three new anthropoids were found in the Bugti Hills of central Pakistan.

Scientists believe our world-traveling animal cousins were anthropoids, which means "apes" and refers to the group of primates from which humans evolved.

"The Oligocene period (30-25 million years ago) in South Asia was so far totally undocumented paleontologically," said Laurent Marivaux, lead author of the paper.

"So, it is not surprising that the discovery of fossilized animals from this period is totally new for science, and that they (may) change or modify substantially our previous view on mammal evolution, notably here, the evolutionary history of anthropoid primates."

He added, "The evolutionary history of these old anthropoid lineages represents the beginnings of the evolutionary history of humans."

Marivaux and his team named the new anthropoids Bugtipithecus inexpectans, Phileosimias kamali and Phileosimias brahuiorum. They were tiny and somewhat similar to today's lemurs, according to Marivaux, who is a paleontologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Science at Montpellier II University in France.

Their small, underdeveloped teeth reveal that the primates probably ate insects and fruit. Climate records for this period suggest that the animals lived in a warm, humid tropical rainforest.

Fossil remains for other animals indicate the primates shared the Asian rainforest with more than 20 different species of rodents, bats, carnivores, deer-like animals, pigs, a rhino-like creature, called Baluchitherium, and other primates.

Remains for later primates similar to the new anthropoids previously were found in China, Burma and Thailand. The newly excavated teeth now indicate that anthropoids had a larger range in Asia than thought, since the animals made their way to Pakistan.

Christopher Beard, curator and head of the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, told Discovery News that he generally agreed with the new conclusions.

"Together, the fossil anthropoid primates that are known from China, Thailand, Myanmar and now Pakistan constitute an impressive amount of data indicating that the 'higher primate' lineage that today includes all monkeys, apes, and humans must have originated in Asia, not in Africa as earlier scientists believed," Beard said.

He added that the new evidence, to him, indicated that "an early member of this (anthropoid Asian group) made its way to Africa, where they continued to evolve and diversify, eventually giving rise to living monkeys, apes and humans."

Christopher Wills, professor of biological sciences at the University of California, San Diego, agreed that early anthropoid evolution likely did not just occur in Africa.

Wills told Discovery News that the evolution probably included "substantial migrations over long distances, in and out of Africa perhaps."

Beard and Marivaux said the early anthropoids that stayed in Asia continued to evolve too, but not in a direction that led to apes and humans. The consensus among most experts is that humans only emerged in Africa.

Link