I feel like this needs to go in some high-level FAQ somewhere:
Genetic natural selection is done operating on people. There is no need to speculate about its future effects.
Genetic natural selection takes tens of thousands of years to operate, and it is incredibly unlikely, short of some planet-wide catastrophe that sets back technology thousands of years, that it gets tens of thousands of years to operate without our either starting to seriously re-engineer our own genomes, or abandoning the genetic game all together.
I feel like this needs to go in some high-level FAQ somewhere:
Genetic natural selection is done operating on people. There is no need to speculate about its future effects.
I think it is pretty obvious that natural selection is as we speak having massive effect on the frequencies of various alleles and consequently phenotypes. Among other things we are currently experiencing a massive genetic pruning comparable in scope to the Black Death in the form of exposure to modern contraceptives (as I mention elsewhere) .
Genetic natural selection takes tens of thousands of years to operate, and it is incredibly unlikely, short of some planet-wide catastrophe that sets back technology thousands of years, that it gets tens of thousands of years to operate without our either starting to seriously re-engineer our own genomes, or abandoning the genetic game all together.
In this context, not really, especially considering I find among other things Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran argumentsconvincing.Unless you are a firm believer in the singularity being here before 2040, there is still time for marked changes in what genetically constitutes the “average” human.
I’m very interested in your reasoning though, since considering you seem to at least be familiar with the arguments in favour of recent evolutionary change brought about by the advent of agriculture and civilization, I may be missing something here. :)
Genetic natural selection is done operating on people. There is no need to speculate about its future effects.
We will not be done with genetic natural selection till we give up the flesh, and perhaps not even then.
In populations recently exposed to the modern diet, and ill adapted to it, there has been significant genetic adaption in a couple of generations. S. G.; Ewbank, D.; Govindaraju, D. R.; Stearns, S. C. (2009). “Evolution in Health and Medicine Sackler Colloquium: Natural selection in a contemporary human population”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 1787. Similarly, populations recently exposed to alcohol.
There have been significant and substantial changes in skeletal structure over the last ten thousand years. One can reasonably define the white race in such a way that it is only ten thousand years old, that everyone before then was non white, not that we know what skin color they were. In Jamaica, we are arguably seeing sympatric race formation, as the upper classes develop a significant genetic difference from the lower classes.
Ashekenazi Jews have evolved very substantial genetic differences from Sephardic Jews since the crusades, even though they have single culture, and no one discriminates between them, they have become two quite different races, a single culture, a single folk, yet two races.
Ashekenazi Jews have evolved very substantial genetic differences from Sephardic Jews since the crusades, even though they have single culture, and no one discriminates between them, they have become two quite different races, a single culture, a single folk, yet two races.
There are a lot of cultural differences. Different prayers, different foods, different accents, different values, different humor, different cultural history.
There also is discrimination between them if one looks at the right people who are aware of what they are looking for. This is more akin to how most Americans can’t tell the difference between various East Asian populations.
Naturally American Whites with their predominantly Northern European (German, English, Irish, Scottish) origins aren’t really that close to unmixed Askeanazi. But on nearly every study I’ve run into they are for example closer to Greeks and Italians than the Souther Europeans are to Austrians, British or Russians.
In any case regardless of their genetics, Askenazi Jews are European because:
They basically do come from Europe (in the geographic sense of where they really became a people different from other Jews complete with their own High German language)
In the first approximation they think of themselves and others think of them as European-derived/White or at the very least Western nearly anywhere in the world they live in (be it France, South Africa, the US or even, rather interestingly, in Israel).
Extensive memeplex exchange with the Christian peoples of Europe.
High rates of intermarriage in the 20th and 19th century.
If history had gone a bit differently and there was a Yiddish speaking Askenazi state somewhere near Poland/Ukraine/Belorussia, geneticists would say that its an interesting example of a Eastern European population being genetically closer to Souther Europeans than their neighbours but wouldn’t really break them out as “genetically non-European” as say some Roma populations are.
Of course Askenazi identity is now somewhat tied to Israel which is a homeland for all Jews. But even if this evolves into a true new Jewish Middle Eastern identity, these are still quibbles about geography, religion (quick question do you think Turks would have ever been considered non-European had they been predominantly Christian?) and culture that have little to do with the genetic reality (though those things do correlate in many circumstances).
Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews were first identified as distinct less than a millenium ago. That is fast. It took tens of thousands of years for Europeans to diverge from Africans. If Ashkenazim look different from Sephardim, it’s because people living in northern Europe are more likely to marry northern Europeans, and people living in the Near East are more likely to marry Arabs.
Askenazi Jews seem to be about ~40 to 50% Southern European, the second largest component is basically classical Near Eastern (think Druze or Syrians) and they (according to the current interpretation of genetic data) seem to have been this way for centuries.
Its rather surprising that they seem to have Southern European admixture while there is only a few extra % of Eastern and Northern Admixture, they are among European peoples closest to Italians. Perhaps the mixture stabilised in the Late Roman Empire after Europe became less cosmopolitan? Perhaps both Italians and Jews had much in common to start with due to ancient Greek admixture (they are remarkably close to modern Greeks as well)? Also Germanic migrations in the 5th century where there are already some indications of Jews settling in what is now Germany might be another common imprint.
Recent admixture that occurred after Jewish and Christians started integrating seems to have gone mostly into the gentile population, though naturally in places like America with its massive out marriage rate and considering the large population of marginally Jewish Soviet immigrants in Israel this has probably changed recently.
As to the Shepardim, depends on how the word is used. In the narrow sense of “Spanish Jews” I don’t think the differences are that pronounced (though I must admit I don’t recall much of the data regarding them). But if one under the term includes Mizrahi Jews as often it is, then the differences are rather significant and yes they do seem to have non-negligible Arab admixture or rather a greater similarity to them (someone really needs to recover some Jewish DNA from the Roman and Hellenic period, lots of interesting stuff might be found).
I figured it was something in Yiddish but I couldn’t translate it. The first word looks like it might be “even” or “although” just basing off of the Hebrew equivalent. Unfortunately, I can’t quite recognize the later words and Google translate only translates Yiddish that is written in Hebrew characters and I don’t know which correspond to what in this.
Edit: I would think from context and potential guesses that it is a point about how the Ashkenaz and Sephard have different languages.
There have been significant and substantial changes in skeletal structure over the last ten thousand years. One can reasonably define the white race in such a way that it is only ten thousand years old, that everyone before then was non white, not that we know what skin color they were.
Modern races or rather population groups though they have some deep roots due to archaic admixture are probably mostly rather young. For example the West African type seems to have only arisen with tropical agriculture a few thousand years ago, and has expanded its range in basically historical times (one of the reasons that until quite recently people liked to think of the Khosians as something of urhumans).
I feel like this needs to go in some high-level FAQ somewhere:
Genetic natural selection is done operating on people. There is no need to speculate about its future effects.
Genetic natural selection takes tens of thousands of years to operate, and it is incredibly unlikely, short of some planet-wide catastrophe that sets back technology thousands of years, that it gets tens of thousands of years to operate without our either starting to seriously re-engineer our own genomes, or abandoning the genetic game all together.
This is not true.
I think it is pretty obvious that natural selection is as we speak having massive effect on the frequencies of various alleles and consequently phenotypes. Among other things we are currently experiencing a massive genetic pruning comparable in scope to the Black Death in the form of exposure to modern contraceptives (as I mention elsewhere) .
In this context, not really, especially considering I find among other things Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran arguments convincing.Unless you are a firm believer in the singularity being here before 2040, there is still time for marked changes in what genetically constitutes the “average” human.
I’m very interested in your reasoning though, since considering you seem to at least be familiar with the arguments in favour of recent evolutionary change brought about by the advent of agriculture and civilization, I may be missing something here. :)
This could be right or wrong, but is ambiguous.
Likewise, but probably wrong. Still ambiguous, you should put it differently.
We will not be done with genetic natural selection till we give up the flesh, and perhaps not even then.
In populations recently exposed to the modern diet, and ill adapted to it, there has been significant genetic adaption in a couple of generations. S. G.; Ewbank, D.; Govindaraju, D. R.; Stearns, S. C. (2009). “Evolution in Health and Medicine Sackler Colloquium: Natural selection in a contemporary human population”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 1787. Similarly, populations recently exposed to alcohol.
There have been significant and substantial changes in skeletal structure over the last ten thousand years. One can reasonably define the white race in such a way that it is only ten thousand years old, that everyone before then was non white, not that we know what skin color they were. In Jamaica, we are arguably seeing sympatric race formation, as the upper classes develop a significant genetic difference from the lower classes.
Ashekenazi Jews have evolved very substantial genetic differences from Sephardic Jews since the crusades, even though they have single culture, and no one discriminates between them, they have become two quite different races, a single culture, a single folk, yet two races.
There are a lot of cultural differences. Different prayers, different foods, different accents, different values, different humor, different cultural history.
There also is discrimination between them if one looks at the right people who are aware of what they are looking for. This is more akin to how most Americans can’t tell the difference between various East Asian populations.
The genetic evidence also suggests that much of the difference between the Sephardim and Askenazim arose from the Askenazim getting an influx of European genetic material not from evolution. See this paper for example (although to be clear Askenazim do not genetically look very European compared to most Europeans).
Really depends on who you compare them to.
Naturally American Whites with their predominantly Northern European (German, English, Irish, Scottish) origins aren’t really that close to unmixed Askeanazi. But on nearly every study I’ve run into they are for example closer to Greeks and Italians than the Souther Europeans are to Austrians, British or Russians.
In any case regardless of their genetics, Askenazi Jews are European because:
They basically do come from Europe (in the geographic sense of where they really became a people different from other Jews complete with their own High German language)
In the first approximation they think of themselves and others think of them as European-derived/White or at the very least Western nearly anywhere in the world they live in (be it France, South Africa, the US or even, rather interestingly, in Israel).
Extensive memeplex exchange with the Christian peoples of Europe.
High rates of intermarriage in the 20th and 19th century.
If history had gone a bit differently and there was a Yiddish speaking Askenazi state somewhere near Poland/Ukraine/Belorussia, geneticists would say that its an interesting example of a Eastern European population being genetically closer to Souther Europeans than their neighbours but wouldn’t really break them out as “genetically non-European” as say some Roma populations are.
Of course Askenazi identity is now somewhat tied to Israel which is a homeland for all Jews. But even if this evolves into a true new Jewish Middle Eastern identity, these are still quibbles about geography, religion (quick question do you think Turks would have ever been considered non-European had they been predominantly Christian?) and culture that have little to do with the genetic reality (though those things do correlate in many circumstances).
Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews were first identified as distinct less than a millenium ago. That is fast. It took tens of thousands of years for Europeans to diverge from Africans. If Ashkenazim look different from Sephardim, it’s because people living in northern Europe are more likely to marry northern Europeans, and people living in the Near East are more likely to marry Arabs.
Askenazi Jews seem to be about ~40 to 50% Southern European, the second largest component is basically classical Near Eastern (think Druze or Syrians) and they (according to the current interpretation of genetic data) seem to have been this way for centuries.
Its rather surprising that they seem to have Southern European admixture while there is only a few extra % of Eastern and Northern Admixture, they are among European peoples closest to Italians. Perhaps the mixture stabilised in the Late Roman Empire after Europe became less cosmopolitan? Perhaps both Italians and Jews had much in common to start with due to ancient Greek admixture (they are remarkably close to modern Greeks as well)? Also Germanic migrations in the 5th century where there are already some indications of Jews settling in what is now Germany might be another common imprint.
Recent admixture that occurred after Jewish and Christians started integrating seems to have gone mostly into the gentile population, though naturally in places like America with its massive out marriage rate and considering the large population of marginally Jewish Soviet immigrants in Israel this has probably changed recently.
As to the Shepardim, depends on how the word is used. In the narrow sense of “Spanish Jews” I don’t think the differences are that pronounced (though I must admit I don’t recall much of the data regarding them). But if one under the term includes Mizrahi Jews as often it is, then the differences are rather significant and yes they do seem to have non-negligible Arab admixture or rather a greater similarity to them (someone really needs to recover some Jewish DNA from the Roman and Hellenic period, lots of interesting stuff might be found).
They have pretty distinct cultures I would think.
Efshar punkt farkert.
No love on LW for Yiddish?
I figured it was something in Yiddish but I couldn’t translate it. The first word looks like it might be “even” or “although” just basing off of the Hebrew equivalent. Unfortunately, I can’t quite recognize the later words and Google translate only translates Yiddish that is written in Hebrew characters and I don’t know which correspond to what in this.
Edit: I would think from context and potential guesses that it is a point about how the Ashkenaz and Sephard have different languages.
Modern races or rather population groups though they have some deep roots due to archaic admixture are probably mostly rather young. For example the West African type seems to have only arisen with tropical agriculture a few thousand years ago, and has expanded its range in basically historical times (one of the reasons that until quite recently people liked to think of the Khosians as something of urhumans).