Intra-European variation in musical ability

Some discussion at Mangan's prompted me to look for studies comparing Europeans of various nationalities on tests of musical aptitude. I found a summary of several such studies in a 1955 book:

In a Chicago Jewish orphanage and a Chicago public school, children numbering 550 were given both the Sea shore and the Kwalwasser-Dykema Music Tests. The national and racial groups reported by Sanderson 146 are Jewish, German, Negro, Italian, and Polish. In order of standing, the Jewish group rated highest, followed by German, Italian, Negro, and last, Polish, who showed marked inferiority. In this study the Negroes earned the highest score in rhythm. The total mean scores of the Sanderson study follow: Jews 185.5; Germans 183.2; Negroes 180.6; Italians 178.4 and Polish 173.7.

The Witherson 188 study, a survey of all the children in the grade schools of Duquesne, Pennsylvania, numbering approximately 2,000 children, employed the Kwalwasser-Dykema Music Tests. More than a dozen different national and racial classifications were represented, and although the Sanderson and Witherson studies were conducted in communities separated by considerable distance the resemblances are striking. In descending order of achievement, the groups rate as follows: Jewish, native American, American foreign-born, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, German, English, mixed foreign, Serbian-Croatian, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Slovak, Italian, and Negro. The averages (means) of the Witherson study are presented for comparison with the Sanderson study: Jewish 185.9; German 183.5; Polish 180.5; Italian 178.2; and Negro 177.0. The Eneboe study of 740 Chicago high school students yielded similar results with the same music test. Scandinavian, English, and German children ranked high; the Slavic group was about 20 points lower, and the Italian and Negro children were very low.

Finally, the author wishes to present Dykema's 29 study of ten European groups, numbering approximately 6,000 children of secondary school age, measured abroad. While on sabbatical leave from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1930-31, he gave the tests in ten different countries under conditions that were maintained fairly constant from place to place. The countries represented in his investigation were : Germany, England, Scotland, Czecho-Slovakia, Russia, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Ireland, and France. It would be foolhardy to accept his results without qualification, for an average sampling of only 600 children in each country can hardly be considered adequate. Yet the study is unique and, as test populations go, rather authoritative. The total mean scores earned by the ten groups are:

Country Mean

Germany 193.58
England 193.42
Scotland 193.42
Czechoslovakia 193.03
Russia 192.40
Italy 192.29
Hungary 189.25
Austria 188.98
Ireland 185.33
France 183.14

All countries 191.21

When we compare the scores of children abroad with those of our own country, we find that the average European child earns roughly ten points more. This difference is based upon the measurement of 4,250 American school children tested with the Kwalwasser-Dykema Music Tests about the same time that Professor Dykema was testing abroad. Statistically the difference is large enough to be considered significant. In addition, we note that foreign children show greater variation in their scores; European scores are more heterogeneous and ours more homogene ous. The standard deviation for all European children is 18.70; for American children 16.49. One-third of the children above the average and one-third below the aver age earn between 191. plus 18.7 and 191.2 minus 18.7. American children with their average of 180.9 show a variation of 16.5 above and below the mean. These scores showing less variation support the claims of anthropologists that hybridization is moving at a rapid rate in our country. Sharp national lines of cleavage are being eradicated to a great extent by the forty million immigrants who have settled here in a single century from 1830 to 1930.

[Jacob Kwalwasser. Exploring the Musical Mind.]

For comparison, here is Mangan's breakdown of Charles Murray's list of "significant" composers by national origin:

24 German
16 French
12 Italian
6 Russian
2 Czech
2 English
2 Hungarian
1 Dutch
1 Flemish
1 Norwegian
1 Polish
1 Swedish

Apart from Germany appearing near the top of both lists, within Europe there seems to be little relationship between the number of great composers produced by a country and the average raw musical talent of (modern representatives of) its people.

Interesting reunion

Heartwarming:

Vanuatu villagers whose ancestors killed and ate a Scottish missionary in the 19th century have apologised to the man's descendants at a ceremony on the anniversary of his death. 170 years after people on Erromango killed Presbyterian missionary the Reverend John Williams and his companion, James Harris, some of Mr Williams descendants travelled to the island to take part in a reconciliation ceremony last month.

Some local people felt Erromango had been cursed because of the killings.

New genetic study of Argentines

Nothing surprising here:

Argentineans carried a large fraction of European genetic heritage in their Y-chromosomal (94.1%) and autosomal (78.5%) DNA, but their mitochondrial gene pool is mostly of Native American ancestry (53.7%); instead, African heritage was small in all three genetic systems (less than 4%).

I'm a bit bored with the topic, but those interested are welcome to continue the previous discussion.

Norman Centuries

A new podcast from Lars Brownworth.

Upcoming study of Neolithic DNA from Germany

Polako writes:

About 250 Funnelbeaker (Trichterbecherkultur) and Wartberg Culture skeletons are being tested for Y-DNA, mtDNA and autosomal SNP and STR markers at a lab in Kiel. They come from 3400-3000BC burial sites at Panker, eastern Schleswig-Holstein, Großenrode and Odagsen, southern Lower Saxony, and Calden, North Hessen. All of those places are in North-Central Germany. The scientists not only hope to determine the ancestry of the samples, but also their pigmentation traits, by looking at SNPs associated with hair, skin and eye color.

The project's website.

Racial differences in steroid use

Not a comprehensive review, just a summary of the first few studies I found.

A study of adolescents in Minnesota finds finds 2.1% of white males and 7.6% black males report having "used anabolic steroids to gain muscle in the past 12 months" [1]. Other numbers from this study: Hispanic 6.1%; Hmong 14.8%; other Asian 7.9%.

A study of high school football players in Indiana finds "minorities are twice as likely to use AAS" compared to whites [2].

An NCAA survey finds black college athletes are less likely to report using steroids than white athletes (unfortunately, results by sex and sport further broken down by race are not shown) [3]. Blacks also report less use of every other drug in this study. Considering that other evidence indicates blacks tend to underreport and whites tend to overreport drug use in surveys [4], I don't find these results terribly convincing.

[1] Irving et al. Steroid Use Among Adolescents: Findings From Project EAT. Journal of Adolescent Health 2002;30:243–252

[2] Stilger, GS and CE Yesalis. Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use Among High School Football Players. Journal of Community Health, Vol. 24, No. 2, April 1999

[3] NCAA Research Staff. NCAA Study of Substance Use and Abuse Habits of College Student-Athletes. September 1997.

[4] Bauman KE, Ennett SE. Tobacco use by black and white adolescents: the validity of self-reports. Am J Public Health. 1994 Mar;84(3):394-8.

Studies consistently show that Black adolescents are less likely than White adolescents to use drugs. [. . .] Only one study has empirically addressed the possibility that Black adolescents might underreport their drug use more than White adolescents. Mensch and Kandel11 found that among youths who had reported in 1980 that they had used drugs, more Blacks than Whites reported in 1984 that they had never used drugs. The one study of young adults that compared Blacks and Whites concluded that Blacks underreported smoking more than Whites. [. . .] Future studies of Black-White differences in drug use that rely on self-reports should account for invalid measurement before proceeding to examine variables of more theoretical and practical interest, or they should give more credence to the possibility that the differences they attempt to explain may be due in large part to differential validity.

Racial differences in muscle mass

Blue Anonymous asked about this. The evidence I've seen suggests that in the US, black men average similar or very slightly greater muscle mass than white men.

Multiple-regression analysis in the present study demonstrated no significant differences in the SM/ATFM [skeletal muscle / adipose tissue-free body mass] ratio among Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic healthy groups. In contrast, African-Americans had a significantly larger SM/ATFM ratio than the other groups, although the difference was very small. According to Equation 4, for example, the mean SM/ATFM ratio is 0.524 for a 30-year-old African-American man weighing 70 kg, while the mean ratio is 0.522 for Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic men of the same age and body weight.
[Wang et al. Muscularity in adult humans: proportion of adipose tissue-free body mass as skeletal muscle. Am J Hum Biol. 2001 Sep-Oct;13(5):612-9.]

Blacks probably carry a greater proportion of their muscle in their arms and legs (which is unsurprising considering they have relatively longer limbs), but total skeletal muscle mass is similar.

Overall, the matched Black and White men had similar fat, FFM, TBW, and TBK. Thus there were no major absolute differences in body composition between the two ethnic groups beyond that of skeletal mass.

In agreement with our findings, Schutte et al. (1984) found that Black and White males of equivalent height and weight had a similar absolute TBW. Slaughter et al. (1990) also found no significant ethnic differences in TBW adjusted for height among adolescent Black and White boys.

[. . .] Total body potassium is an indirect marker of skeletal muscle mass and results are therefore difficult to interpret. One possible explanation for the varied findings is that Black men may have more appendicular muscle and less trunk muscle than White men. According to this hypothesis, Black and White men would have different amounts of skeletal muscle in specific anatomic regions but similar amounts of total skeletal muscle.
[Gerace et al. Skeletal differences between black and white males and their relevance to body composition estimates. Am J Hum Biol 1994;6:255–62.]

The evidence I've seen also suggests whites tend to have greater strength per unit of muscular cross-section than blacks. (Despite the fact that black males more frequently report lifting weights.)

White culture, Jewish culture, and the origins of psychotherapy

This author will have multiculturalists know that psychotherapy is not a White thing.

Multicultural literature often states that psychotherapy is a product of White culture. This article differentiates between White culture and Jewish culture and demonstrates the extent of the influence of Jewish culture on the origin and development of psychotherapy. The first section compares White culture to Jewish culture in terms of compatibility with the values and orientation of psychotherapy. The second section first demonstrates that psychoanalysis not only developed within Jewish culture, but also that it shares many features with Jewish mysticism. Then psychoanalysis and Gestalt psychology are compared to American behavioral psychology to demonstrate the differences in their orientations. The third section documents the contributions of Jews to psychological theory and psychotherapy.

[Langman, P.F. (1997). White culture, Jewish culture, and the origins of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, 34, 2, 207-218.]

More excerpts within:

New Asian, African Genome Assemblies Reveal Novel Human Sequence

A news story about a recently released paper:

The team used short-read assembly approaches to put together new Asian and African genomes, which they then compared with the current human reference sequence. The result: about five million bases of sequence not found in the reference. [. . .]

They also began applying the data to answer questions about human population and migration patterns, honing in on 164 newly detected sequences that did not overlap between the Asian and African genomes. [. . .]

While the overall pattern in these sequences was consistent with an out of Africa migration, their analyses also uncovered new patterns that couldn't be detected from mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA studies.

For instance, they found that a sequence frequently found in the San population in southern Africa is less and less frequent in northern Africa. The frequency of this sequence apparently dwindles even more in populations outside of Africa, disappearing in European, Oceanic, and Native American populations.

In contrast, the team noted, they found a sequence that is more prominent with geographic distance from Africa. Still other sequences had less straightforward patterns, decreasing in East Asian and Oceanic populations compared with African populations but turning up again in European populations.

Along with population patterns, the genomes also provided hints about how genome sequence varies from one individual to the next. For example, while the Asian and African individuals' genomes differed by about four million bases (not including SNPs), the researchers found about a 1.8 million base difference between the Chinese genome and a preliminary Korean genome sequence assembly.

More on race, crime, and intelligence

Nathaniel Weyl, writing in 1973:

The hypothesis which I should like to explore in these pages is that the criminality of races and subraces tends to vary inversely with their intelligence.

This thesis would seem a priori plausible on two grounds. The first is that a variety of studies have shown that the average l.Q.s of criminals and prison inmates are significantly lower than those of the populations from which they are drawn. The second is that most crimes seem to be committed by people who are deficient in such positive psychic qualities as foresight and selfcontrol.

The hypothesis would not, however, apply to all types of crime. Such offenses as embezzlement, forgery, fraud, and even operating numbers games, are differentially attractive to people of above-average intelligence. These mentally exacting felonies yield a small proportion of total arrests, convictions, and sentences. Those who engage in them are not typical criminals.

Besides containing additional data showing the relationship between criminality and intelligence, this article also touches on some other issues raised in the comments of the previous post:

Professor Bonger presents statistics on criminal convictions of Jews, as compared with non-Jews, per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 years oki for Germany (1882-1891, 1892-1901. 1909- 1910, 1915 and 1916), Austria (1885-1900). Hungary (1904. 1906- 1909). Poland (1924-1925) and the Netherlands (1901-1909. 1910-1915, 1919 and 1931-1933). The German data for 1909-1910 are probably as representative as any for the pre-First World War period. They show that Jews committed proportionately two and a half times as many frauds and forgeries as Gentiles. Their conviction rate for "insult" was about 40 per cent higher and they participated about equally with non-Jews in proportion to population in embezzlement and receiving stolen goods. The Jewish rate for theft. however, was 71.1 per 100.000 as against 178.3 for all other components of the population. Their conviction rate was about 40 per cent of the Gentile rate for felonious assault, about half that rate for rape, less than a third for murder and about a fifth for malicious mischief.

More excerpts within:

Immigration to the United States, 1789–1930

NEHGS eNews describes one of Harvard's online collections:

While the collection stretches from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression, the greatest focus is on the nineteenth century. The collection includes 1,800 books and pamphlets, 9,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000 pages from manuscript and archival collections. [. . .] Themes include the Chinese Exclusionary Act, Scandinavian Immigration, and the Settlement House Movement. Both sides of immigration are illustrated with organizations such as the Children’s Aid Society, North Bennet Street School, and the Immigration Restriction League. [. . .] One of the books available online, for example, is America’s Race Heritage: An Account of the Diffusion of Ancestral Stocks in the United States During Three Centuries of National Expansion, and a Discussion of its Significance by Clinton Stoddard Burr, published in 1922. In discussing later immigration, Burr states:

“But from the year 1845 the crest of the immigration flood shows waves and troughs directly corresponding to economic or other variations in foreign countries, or to industrial conditions in the United States. The first great influx occurred in the decade from 1845 to 1854, when the potato famine in Ireland and the revolution in Germany brought many thousands to this country. The gold rush to California also attracted thousands, from England and other countries of Europe. Then followed a depression during the War of the Rebellion, recovery following only after the signing of the peace.” (p. 91)

Stoddard also imparts the view of many nativists of the time when he states:

“If we could recall the years, how many of us would wish the South to be populated in part with Negroes? Yet an even more rampant danger, from so-called white people of lowest quality, now threatens our native white stock; for we may segregate the Negro because of his remote racial type, but the qualities of low class Europeans will gradually and inevitably demoralize our body politic through introduction of a new heredity character and temperament among us.” (p. 168)

Stoddard was clearly a bigot, prejudiced against individuals of many ethnic backgrounds. However, an understanding of this point of view will allow you to greater understand your immigrant ancestors' experience in their new home.

Many of the books in the collection have probably also been digitized by (and might be more conveniently viewed at) Google Books or archive.org (as the Clinton Stoddard Burr book mentioned above has), but I would guess much of the material is not available elsewhere (e.g., the records of the Immigration Restriction League).

The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem

Interesting article, though probably wrong at least in some places (pdf):

Conventional wisdom has regarded low self-esteem as an important cause of violence, but the opposite view is theoretically viable. An interdisciplinary review of evidence about aggression, crime, and violence contradicted the view that low self-esteem is an important cause. Instead, violence appears to be most commonly a result of threatened egotism—that is, highly favorable views of self that are disputed by some person or circumstance. Inflated, unstable, or tentative beliefs in the self's superiority may be most prone to encountering threats and hence to causing violence. The mediating process may involve directing anger outward as a way of avoiding a downward revision of the self-concept. [. . .]

Comparing self-esteem across racial or ethnic groups is complicated by several factors, such as measurement issues and temporal changes, but the very possibility of temporal shifts presents an appealing chance to look for covariation in self-esteem and violence levels. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, American White men presumably were fairly securely convinced of their superior status. This confidence is generally assumed to have eroded in recent decades, and indeed research now indicates that Black people have self-esteem levels equal to or higher than those of White people (see Crocker & Major, 1989, for review). Concerted efforts to boost racial pride and dignity among Black Americans in the 1960s and 1970s may have contributed to this shift.

Meanwhile, violence levels also appear to have changed, and these changes directly contradict the view that low self-esteem promotes violence. During the period when White men had the highest self-esteem, they were also apparently the most violent group. Historians believe that rapes of White women by Black men were quite rare, whereas the reverse was relatively common (e.g., Brownmiller, 1975). Likewise, the majority of interracial murders involved White men killing Blacks, a pattern that is still reasonably well documented into the 1920s (e.g., Brearly, 1932; Hoffman, 1925; Von Hentig, 1948). These patterns have been reversed in recent decades as Black self-esteem has risen relative to White self-esteem. According to Scully (1990), Black men now rape White women approximately 10 times as often as White men rape Black women. The timing of this reversal appears to coincide with the concerted cultural efforts to boost self-esteem among Blacks: LaFree's (1976) review of multiple studies of interracial rape concluded that researchers found approximately equal numbers of Black-on-White and White-on-Black rape in the 1950s, but since 1960 all studies have found a preponderance of Black-on-White rape (see also Brownmiller, 1975). Similarly, recent murder statistics indicate that the strong majority (80%–90%) of interracial murders now consist of Blacks murdering Whites (Adler, 1994). Clearly, both races have committed far too many horrible crimes, and neither race can find much claim to any moral high ground in these statistics, but the shifting patterns on both sides repeatedly link higher or rising esteem with increasing criminal violence toward the other.

[Baumeister RF, Smart L, Boden JM. Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: the dark side of high self-esteem. Psychol Rev. 1996 Jan;103(1):5-33.]

What explains racial differences in crime?

As we've seen, not testosterone. A much better candidate for explaining racial differences in criminality: racial differences in intelligence. Robert Gordon demonstrated decades ago that simply controlling for IQ eliminates almost the entire black-white gap in juvenile delinquency, and Murray and Herrnstein similarly find IQ explains most of the black-white difference in incarceration rates:

Sociologist Robert Gordon has analyzed black-white differences in crime and concluded that virtually all of the difference in the prevalence of black and white juvenile delinquents is explained by the IQ difference, independent of the effect of socioeconomic status. The only reliable indicator from the NLSY that lets us compare criminal behavior across ethnic groups is the percentage of young men who were ever interviewed while incarcerated.The figure below shows the standard comparison, before and after controlling for cognitive ability. Among white men, the proportion interviewed in a correctional facility after controlling for age was 2.4 percent; among black men, it was 13.1 percent. This large black-white difference was reduced by almost three-quarters when IQ was taken into account. The relationship of cognitive ability to criminal behavior among whites and blacks appears to be similar. 40 As in the case of other indicators, we are left with a nontrivial black-white difference even after controlling for IQ, but the magnitude of the difference shrinks dramatically.

[The Bell Curve, pp. 338-339; two papers by Robert Gordon are cited:
Gordon, R. A. 1987. SES versus IQ in the race-IQ-delinquency model. International J . of Sociology and Social Policy 7:30-96.
Gordon, R. A. 1976. Prevalence: The rare datum in delinquency measurement and its implications for the theory of delinquency. In The Juvenile Justice System. M. W. Klein (ed.). Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage Publications, pp. 201-284.]

A more recent paper by Gordon (Everyday life as an intelligence test: Effects of intelligence and intelligence context. Intelligence, 24, 203-320.) confirms his results for juvenile delinquency and extends them to adult criminality.

Jews and Irish: Latecomers to Modernity

Excerpts from chapter 19 of John Murray Cuddihy's The Ordeal of Civility (continue reading):

Assortative mating by genetic ancestry in admixed populations

Via HBD Books, "Guapa, it's your genetic ancestry I love":

within Mexican populations, people tended to pick partners with similar proportions of Native American and European ancestry, while in Puerto Rican populations couples had paired up based on their shared balance of European and African ancestry. [. . .] presumably people had cued into subtle variations in appearance, behaviour and even odour.

"I think it's fascinating," says Burchard. "People are sizing up their partners, maybe in subconscious ways."

The paper ("Ancestry-related assortative mating in latino populations") is open access.

Facial Skin Coloration Affects Perceived Health of Human Faces

Attractiveness Based Partly on Skin Color. The paper is open access:

We here investigate the role of overall skin color in determining perceptions of health from faces by allowing participants to manipulate the skin portions of color-calibrated Caucasian face photographs along CIELab color axes. To enhance healthy appearance, participants increased skin redness (a*), providing additional support for previous findings that skin blood color enhances the healthy appearance of faces. Participants also increased skin yellowness (b*) and lightness (L*), suggesting a role for high carotenoid and low melanin coloration in the healthy appearance of faces.

Depressed youth have more sex partners

Amazingly, no one seems to have picked up on this (abstract) proof that women find depression (like the "dark triad") irresistible:

The researchers determined that close to 20% of black women were recently or chronically depressed in adulthood, as were 11.9% of black men, 13% of white women and 8.1% of white men.

For both genders and among blacks and whites, being depressed was associated with a greater likelihood of having multiple sex partners

(In case someone misses the sarcasm.)

Admixture estimates for Haiti and Jamaica

Though this study (The genetic structure of populations from Haiti and Jamaica reflect divergent demographic histories) is based on only 15 autosomal STRs, the results appear reasonable.

a stronger African signal is detected in Haiti than in Jamaica. Although only minimal contributions from non-African sources were observed in Haiti, Jamaica displays genetic input from both European and East Asian sources, an admixture profile similar to other New World collections of African descent analyzed in this report.

Average admixture proportions for Haiti are estimated to be: 95.5% African; 0.3% East Asian; 4.3% European. For Jamaica: 78.3%; 5.7%; 16.0%.

Very objective

A commenter draws my attention to this remarkable passage from a recent article by the macho man Tomislav Sunic:

A Dinaric-Mediterranean Macho Touch?

It is no accident that the ideal type of White male beauty in the West never appears in a single racial type but rather as a combination of all three. Historically, the ideal type of an attractive White male has Nordic stature and skull with dark Dinaric or Mediterranean hair. No wonder that White women in the West are attracted to this combination, as embodied by films stars Antonio Banderas, Sean Connery, etc. Seldom is a pure Nordic male specimen viewed among White women as the epitome of male attractiveness. There are jokes in continental and southern Europe about blond-haired White males being “albinos” or “faggots.” Manliness, with a grain of machismo, has traditionally been associated with the Dinaric and Mediterranean subtypes.

Dark hair is an ancestral trait (of little taxonomic value); no population is exclusively blond. A Northwestern European with dark hair does not have "Dinaric or Mediterranean hair"; he is manifesting part of normal Northwestern European variation.

The data I'm aware of indicate white women prefer blond hair to black hair in men and the proportion of women favoring men with blond hair is higher than the proportion of men with blond hair [1]. The modal hair color preference of both white men and women is brown (probably not coincidentally the modal hair color of Northwestern Europeans).

Brad Pitt was "chosen by Empire as one of the 25 sexiest stars in film history. In addition, he has twice been named the Sexiest Man Alive by People in 1995 and 2000." See also: Robert Redford, Jude Law, Daniel Craig, etc.

As for why blond men are disproportionately cast as villains, Steve Sailer has written:

Exactly why Hollywood hates blond men almost as much as it loves blond women is not clear. Some have suggested complicated combinations of resentment and longing in regard to WASPs and/or Nordics.

I don't think it's complicated or mysterious. It certainly can't be to Tomislav, assuming he possesses the slightest bit of self-awareness.

Relatedly, Tomislav might consider the possibility that jokes about Northern European men by people who look like him are not the best source of objective truth. For the record, Tom, there are jokes in America and northern Europe about southern European males being "greasy" or "faggots" (in addition to serious proposals).

It goes without saying that Northern European men best exemplify manliness as defined by Northern Europeans. Southern European men are typically viewed as lazy, dishonest, cowardly, and effeminate by contrast. I grant that, by southern European standards of manhood, the overwhelming majority of Northern European men are likely deficient in gold chains and body odor.

[1] Feinman and Gill. Sex differences in physical attractiveness preferences. Journal of Social Psychology. Vol 105(1), Jun 1978, pp. 43-52.

Mendacious Moldbug

Moldbug once again holds forth on the history of Bizarro World in the safety of the gnxp comments section:

to succeed [Jews] assimilated the cultural tropes of America's highest status caste - the Boston Brahmins, basically. For every "Punch" Sulzberger, there is an Alger Hiss. No, he was not born "Hissjewsky."

Back on Earth:

Into the 1930s the American Communist Party (CPUSA) had a Yiddish-speaking Jewish section. [. . .]

Jews were also vastly overrepresented in high-profile cases among those invoking the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate oneself, so that public hearings like McCarthy's inevitably highlighted the Jewish role in communism. For example, in 1952, of 124 people questioned by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Weingarten identifies 79 Jews, 32 non-Jews and 13 with unknown ethnicity. All invoked the Fifth.

Even more remarkably, of the 42 people who were dismissed from their positions at the Fort Monmouth Laboratories in New Jersey on suspicion of constituting a spy ring (the same one that Julius Rosenberg belonged to), 39 were Jews and one other was married to a Jewish woman.

Alger Hiss was born in Baltimore (not Boston) to a "middle class wholesale grocer" who killed himself when Hiss was two. His family was neither wealthy nor socially prominent. His Supreme Court clerkship indicates little more than that he had the favor of Felix Frankfurter, to whom an aged Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., delegated the choice.

Quotes from actual "Boston Brahmins":

You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply. But an American I was born, and American I have remained all my life. I can never be anything else but an American [. . .] I have never had but one allegiance; I cannot divide it now. [. . .] Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolsheviks, and by the men to whom all countries are alike, provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive. (Henry Cabot Lodge)

The social reformers of today seem to me so far to forget that we no more can get something for nothing by legislation than we can by mechanics as to be satisfied if the bill to be paid for their improvements is not presented in a lump sum. [. . .] I believe that the wholesale social regeneration which so many now seem to expect, if it can be helped by conscious, coordinated human effort, cannot be affected appreciably by tinkering with the institution of property, but only by taking in hand life and trying to build a race. That would be my starting point for an ideal for the law. The notion that with socialized property we should have women free and a piano for everybody seems to me an empty humbug. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.)

Yes, clearly, Yiddish-speaking Communist factory workers were guilty only of wanting to assimilate to the norms of "America's highest status caste".

Related: "WASPs", Jews, and McCarthy; New England political thought a century ago; Moldbuggery Redux

Megan Smolenyak on 23andMe's Relative Finder

The famed Al Sharpton and Michelle Obama genealogist explains how discovering that DNA testing confirms the relatedness of a group of people with roots in an isolated, Eastern European peasant village strengthens her belief in the assertion that:

if you go back far enough, we're all cousins. [. . .] "no human being (of any race) can be less closely related to any other human than approximately fiftieth cousin, and most of us (no matter what color our neighbors) are a lot closer."

At an outlet other than Huffington Post, the use of dodgy math to "prove" everyone is genealogically related might seem counterintuitive as a theme around which to base an article on a tool that aims to directly assess genetic relatedness. John Hawks pointed out in 2006 in response to an article containing similar themes:

Geneticists are generally concerned with a subset of this genealogical network. We care not about the number of genealogical ties among people (which must grow indefinitely large very quickly in any population), but about the actual ancestry of genes.

Also see Genealogical vs. genetic ancestors and Blaine Bettinger's post on genealogical and genetic trees. While Relative Finder will uncover the occasional surprising distant relationship, mostly it will find connections between people with similar racial/geographic origins, as it did with Smolenyak's Osturnites.

Zombie DNAPrint says Larry David is 37% Native American

It's back (its shitty test is back, anyway, through a licensing agreement with "DNA Diagnostics Center").

Channel 4's "Race: Science's Last Taboo"

There are download links for the six documentaries that make up this series in this thread.

Based on Alex Kurtagic's review of the "Race and Intelligence" episode, Richard Hoste sees signs of progress for hereditarianism:

In this show, even an opponent of the race-IQ link admit that intelligence is determined to some extent by heredity and that there are general biological race differences. The audience is told that races differ in skull size. Channel 4 even grants the IQ gap, but chalks it up to environment. Gould would’ve called them all Nazis.

Even treating this as a debatable scientific question on television is huge. Lynn and Rushton’s books are shown on national TV. We’ll have to wait and see if there’s a spike in how they’re selling. The obviousness of HBD makes it very dangerous to bring up, even to debunk.

And although the black host is there for PC reasons, his admitted emotional attachment to the issue makes him appear not very credible in his denials.

I agree that as blank-slate/race-does-not-exist propaganda, the series is rather weak, presenting the viewer with a schizophrenic jumble of discordant facts and opinions, ineptly edited together and failing as a rational argument in favor of the positions it was presumably meant to advance. But I'm not sure this gives cause for optimism. Egalitarians never succeeded based on the strength of their reasoning; they succeeded by making moral claims and by imposing personal and professional costs on their enemies. Inconvenient facts are no match for incantations of "racism" or "the Holocaust" -- or so the producers and presenters of this series seem clearly to believe.

Hoste may be right, however, that on net those responsible for the series have scored an own goal. The appeals to racism and The Holocaust seem even more forced than usual, and the motivations of many of the presenters and interviewees are nakedly telegraphed. One example is mentioned above by Hoste. Other examples include an Indian woman with a half-white child hosting the episode that promotes Alon Ziv's theory of mixed-race superiority, or Jonathan Marks stating:

When I read my students Madison Grant, and I read it angrily, my students say, "Why do you take such a personal interest in this?" And I say, well, because it was my grandparents and great-grandparents that he was trying to keep out of the United States.

That's from the "Human Zoos" episode (which explains how ethnographic displays at the 1904 World's Fair led inevitably to The Holocaust).

An admixture estimate for Los Angeles hispanics

From an open-access paper:

overall estimates of 45.5% Native American (NA), 40.1% European (EU), 9.8% Asian (AS), and 4.5% African-American (AA) ancestry. Gradients of increasing NA background (37.3% to 51.7%) and of correspondingly decreasing EU ancestry (45.3% to 29.6%) were observed as a function of birth origin from North to South.

These estimates are based on only 176 SNPs, so I'm sure they contain at minimum a few percentage points of noise (which shouldn't make a big difference here). As one might expect, among L.A. Hispanics, those born in the US have the highest levels of European ancestry. Guatemalans/Salvadorians have the lowest. Mexicans are intermediate.

Genealogical vs. genetic ancestors

An interesting simulation by Luke Jostins:

The probability of having DNA from all of your genealogical ancestors at a particular generation becomes vanishingly small very rapidly; there is a 99.6% chance that you will have DNA from all of your 16 great-great grandparents, only a 54% of sharing DNA with all 32 of your G-G-G grandparents, and a 0.01% chance for your 64 G-G-G-G grandparents. You only have to go back 5 generations for genealogical relatives to start dropping off your DNA tree. [. . .]

The number of genetic ancestors starts off growing exponentially, but eventually flattens out to around 125 (at 10 generations, 120 of your 1024 genealogical ancestors are genetic ancestors).

Another method for inferring population structure

Assessing population genetic structure via the maximisation of genetic distance:

This new method used to infer the hidden structure in a population, based on the maximisation of the genetic distance and not taking into consideration any assumption about Hardy-Weinberg and linkage equilibrium, performs well under different simulated scenarios and with real data. Therefore, it could be a useful tool to determine genetically homogeneous groups, especially in those situations where the number of clusters is high, with complex population structure and where Hardy-Weinberg and/or linkage equilibrium are present.

23andMe announces "Relative Finder" at TEDMED

23andMe say they have 30,000+ "active" genomes in their database and will launch Relative Finder "soon". The beta version of Relative Finder has been available for about a week. One interesting note: while Northwestern European American users typically have on the order of 200 "cousins" listed in Relative Finder, Ashkenazi Jewish users usually have over 1,000. From a related abstract:

Interestingly, the average sharing in the simulated distant cousins was consistently less than the observed average sharing in each population sample. This finding indicates the presence of fine-scale population structure for many ethnic groups, such as the Ashkenazim, within the last 10 generations (200-300 years).

The Book of Hallowe’en (1919)

Some light reading or listening for Halloween.

This book is intended to give the reader an account of the origin and history of Hallowe’en, how it absorbed some customs belonging to other days in the year,—such as May Day, Midsummer, and Christmas.

Homo Sapiens 1900 (1998)

A somewhat tedious history of the eugenics movement by The Architecture of Doom-director Peter Cohen.

Google videos link; Wikipedia; IMDB.

Can racial differences in circulating testosterone explain racial differences in crime?

No. According to the DOJ:

an estimated 32% of black males will enter State or Federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 17% of Hispanic males and 5.9% of white males.

Assuming levels of testosterone (T) and criminality are perfectly correlated (they're not--the relationship between testosterone and criminality is far from clear even within populations), a third of black males would need to have higher T than all but 6% of white men to explain black-white differences in crime in terms favored by guywhite.

In reality, large, representative US samples show minimal or no black-white differences in T. Using NHANES III data, Rohrmann et al. find elevated estrogen but not testosterone in black males. A recent reanalysis by Mazur (which Jason Malloy alerted me to), in which Mazur examines the same data but applies no sampling weights, finds slightly elevated T in blacks. Mazur, reviewing the results of his and other studies, nonetheless concludes:

Despite inconsistencies among studies, all agree that there are no major, general differences in T or SHBG (or calculated BioT) among the ethnic groups that have been studied.

A glance at Mazur's scatterplots suffices to confirm that, no, 32% of black men do not in fact have higher T than all but 6% of white men.

Moreover, Mazur finds no racial differences in T among adolescents (consistent with the findings of a larger study of adolescents). So how does guywhite explain differences in criminality between black and white teenagers? How does he explain greater Mexican criminality? How does he explain criminality in sub-Saharan Africa when sub-Saharan Africans average lower T than Westerners? Note that, as I've explained to guywhite repeatedly, why sub-Saharan Africans have lower T is immaterial; the question is how their managing to combine low T and high criminality squares with guywhite's simplistic model of the world.

Of course environment influences T levels. (McCain supporters "suffered a testosterone crash after Obama's victory became apparent".) Mazur notes that lower rates of marriage and weight gain explain much of the black elevation in T he observes. Black-white T differences increase with age (in Mazur's plots, they appear minuscule before the age of about 30), perhaps due in part to differences in mortality:

Possibly a high mortality rate among obese black men produces the appearance of stable adiposity (and high T) among black survivors.

So it's clear differences in circulating testosterone can't explain black-white differences in crime, and unclear that any small black-white differences in circulating T that may exist in a given sample call for some deep (or hilariously shallow in guywhite's case) evolutionary explanation.

N.B.: There's no evidence here that baseline racial differences in adiposity are caused by (or cause) racial differences in T (no racial differences in T were found among adolescents, and minuscule differences were found among young men). As with criminality, relative leanness seems to characterize both American black and black African males, even though black Africans have markedly lower T. Similarly, elevated estrogen, having been observed in both American blacks and black Africans, seems to be a relatively stable racial feature unrelated to elevated T.

Human-Neanderthal interbreeding

News outlets are reporting on Svante Paabo's comment that he believes modern humans and Neanderthals "had sex". I'm not sure why it's suddently news: the comment was made in an interview six months ago, and Paabo merely said:

“I’m sure that they had sex, but did it give offspring that contributed to us? We will be able to answer quite rigorously with the new [Neanderthal genome] sequence.”

The only new information seems to be that Paabo will publish his analysis of the Neanderthal genome "shortly".

Guy White's brilliant reasoning

A commenter has drawn my attention to this hilarious attack on me the world's dumbest internet lawyer. White's comments don't warrant a response, but this episode is too funny to ignore.

Recap below the break:

Changes in ethnic/national origins of Forbes 400 richest Americans, 1987-2009

A comparison of my estimates for the 2009 list to Nathaniel Weyl's for 1987.

	1987 (%)	2009 (%)	% change
Northwestern European	72	52.5	(26)
Jewish	23	35.25	53
Italian	2.25	3.5	56
East Asian	0.25	2.0	700
South Asian	0.0	1.25	∞
Middle Eastern	1.5	1.75	17
Greek	0.5	1.5	200
Eastern European	0.25	1.5	500
Hispanic	0.25	0.5	100
Black	0.0	0.25	∞

Source: Geography of American Achievement, p. 81. Weyl's original, more detailed breakdown shown below.

2009 Forbes 400 by ethnic origins

[Related: 2012 Forbes 400 by ethnic origins]

[Edit: Moved from Jewish section: John Abele and (per comments at Sailer's) Warren Stephens, William Gross, and John Arrillaga. Moved Joseph Mansueto and A. James Clark from Jewish section. Moved Roski, Rainwater, and Peterson. "Indian" to "South Asian"; caste designations by rec1man. Moved Barrack. Moved John Paulson to Jewish list. Moved Phillip Frost. Moved David Shaw. Moved Morgridge and Drucknmiller.]

Not meant to be authoritative. Methodology: I started with JTA's Jewish list, removed the Bechtels and Meg Whitman, and added Eddie Lampert (I don't think there's any doubt the latter is at least part Jewish--see his photograph or his sister's wedding announcement).

From the still unclassified portion of the complete list, I then separated out obvious/known non-Northwestern Europeans, and presumed (for now) that those who remained are of Northwestern European ancestry. Feel free to post comments/corrections.

My initial current estimate of the ethnic breakdown:
Northwestern European 52.25%
Jewish 35%
Italian 3.5%
East Asian 2%
Middle Eastern 2.25%
Eastern European 1.5%
Greek 1.5%
South Asian 1.25%
Hispanic 0.5%
Black 0.25%

Northwestern European (207/400)
1 William Gates III 50,000 53 Medina Microsoft
2 Warren Buffett 40,000 79 Omaha Berkshire Hathaway
4 Christy Walton & family 21,500 54 Jackson Wal-Mart
5 Jim C. Walton 19,600 61 Bentonville Wal-Mart
6 Alice Walton 19,300 60 Fort Worth Wal-Mart
7 S. Robson Walton 19,000 65 Bentonville Wal-Mart
9 Charles Koch 16,000 73 Wichita manufacturing, energy
9 David Koch 16,000 69 New York manufacturing, energy
17 Paul Allen 11,500 56 Mercer Island Microsoft, investments
17 Abigail Johnson 11,500 47 Boston Fidelity
19 Forrest Edward Mars 11,000 78 McLean candy, pet food
19 Jacqueline Mars 11,000 70 Bedminster candy, pet food
19 John Mars 11,000 73 Arlington candy, pet food
24 Philip Knight 9,500 71 Beaverton Nike
26 Anne Cox Chambers 9,000 89 Atlanta Cox Enterprises
28 Jeffrey Bezos 8,800 45 Seattle Amazon
30 Dan Duncan 8,000 76 Houston energy
30 Edward C. Johnson III 8,000 79 Boston Fidelity
32 Jack Crawford Taylor & family 7,000 87 St. Louis Enterprise Rent-A-Car
33 James Goodnight 6,800 66 Cary SAS Institute
35 John Kluge 6,500 95 Palm Beach Metromedia
37 Philip Anschutz 6,000 69 Denver investments
37 Rupert Murdoch 6,000 78 New York News Corp
39 Harold Hamm 5,800 63 Oklahoma City Continental Resources
40 Eric Schmidt 5,500 54 Atherton Google
44 Frederik Meijer & family 5,000 89 Grand Rapids supermarkets
44 John Menard 5,000 69 Eau Claire home improvement stores
50 Charles Schwab 4,700 72 Atherton discount stock brokerage
52 Andrew Beal 4,500 56 Dallas Beal Bank, real estate
52 James Kennedy 4,500 61 Atlanta Cox Enterprises
52 Blair Parry-Okeden 4,500 58 Scone Cox Enterprises
56 Pauline MacMillan Keinath 4,300 75 St. Louis inheritance
56 Cargill MacMillan Jr. 4,300 82 Wayzata inheritance
56 Whitney MacMillan 4,300 80 Minneapolis inheritance
56 Marion MacMillan Pictet 4,300 76 Haton inheritance
61 Richard DeVos 4,200 83 Ada Alticor
61 Dennis Washington 4,200 75 Missoula construction, mining
64 Robert Rowling 4,100 56 Dallas oil & gas, investments
65 Robert M. Bass 4,000 61 Fort Worth oil, investments
65 Charles Butt 4,000 71 San Antonio supermarkets
65 Charles Johnson 4,000 76 San Mateo Franklin Resources
80 Rupert Johnson 3,700 68 San Mateo Franklin Resources
80 Gordon Moore 3,700 80 Woodside Intel
80 David Murdock 3,700 86 Los Angeles Dole, real estate
80 Harold Simmons 3,700 78 Dallas investments
85 William Cook 3,500 78 Bloomington medical devices
85 Bradley Wayne Hughes & family 3,500 76 Lexington Public Storage
85 Henry Ross Perot 3,500 79 Dallas computer services, real estate
85 Stanley Druckenmiller 3,500 56 Pittsburgh hedge funds
91 John Arnold 3,400 35 Houston hedge funds
91 John Sall 3,400 61 Cary SAS Institute
93 Robert Earl Holding 3,300 82 Sun Valley energy, resorts, ranching
94 Ronald Burkle 3,200 56 Los Angeles supermarkets, investments
94 Richard Kinder 3,200 65 Houston pipelines
94 Ty Warner 3,200 65 Chicago Beanie Babies
97 Riley P. Bechtel 3,000 57 San Francisco engineering, construction
97 Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. 3,000 84 San Francisco engineering, construction
97 Ray Lee Hunt 3,000 66 Dallas oil, real estate
97 Peter R. Kellogg 3,000 67 Short Hills investments
97 Herbert V. Kohler Jr. & family 3,000 70 Kohler plumbing fixtures
97 George Lucas 3,000 65 Marin County Star Wars
97 Richard Schulze 3,000 68 Edina Best Buy
97 Warren Stephens 3,000 52 Little Rock Stephens Inc. **
110 Paul Tudor Jones II 2,900 55 Greenwich hedge funds
110 Ann Walton Kroenke 2,900 60 Columbia Wal-Mart
113 James Jannard 2,800 60 San Juan Islands Oakley, Red Digital Cinema
117 E. Stanley Kroenke 2,700 62 Columbia sports, real estate
118 Ray Dolby 2,600 76 San Francisco Dolby Laboratories
118 Nancy Walton Laurie 2,600 58 Henderson Wal-Mart
118 Patrick McGovern 2,600 72 Hollis IDG
123 William Conway Jr. 2,500 60 McLean leveraged buyouts
123 David Green 2,500 67 Oklahoma City Hobby Lobby
123 Donald Schneider 2,500 74 Green Bay trucking
141 Charles F. Dolan & family 2,300 83 Oyster Bay Cablevision Systems
141 William Barron Hilton 2,300 81 Los Angeles hotels, casinos
141 John Malone 2,300 68 Parker cable television
147 Mary Alice Malone 2,200 59 Coatesville inheritance
147 Julian Robertson Jr. 2,200 77 New York hedge funds, wine
147 David Rockefeller Sr. 2,200 94 New York Standard Oil, banking
147 Ronda Stryker 2,200 55 Kalamazoo Stryker Corp.
147 Glen Taylor 2,200 68 Mankato printing
154 Henry Hillman 2,100 90 Pittsburgh industrialist
154 H. Wayne Huizenga 2,100 71 Fort Lauderdale investments [Dutch]
154 William Wrigley Jr. 2,100 45 Lake Forest chewing gum
158 Lee Bass 2,000 53 Fort Worth oil, investments
158 Sid Bass 2,000 66 Fort Worth oil, investments
158 Jack Dangermond 2,000 64 Redlands mapping software
158 Bennett Dorrance 2,000 63 Paradise Valley inheritance
158 Thomas F. Frist Jr. & family 2,000 71 Nashville HCA Healthcare
158 Gordon Getty 2,000 75 San Francisco inheritance, oil
158 Kenneth Griffin 2,000 41 Chicago hedge funds
158 William Gross 2,000 65 Laguna Beach bonds **
158 Bruce Halle 2,000 79 Paradise Valley Discount Tire
158 Timothy Headington 2,000 59 Dallas oil & gas, investments
158 Diane Hendricks 2,000 62 Afton ABC Supply
158 Amos Hostetter 2,000 72 Boston cable television
158 Martha Ingram & family 2,000 74 Nashville Ingram Industries
158 Donald Trump 2,000 63 New York real estate
183 H. Fisk Johnson 1,950 51 Racine SC Johnson & Sons
183 Imogene Powers Johnson 1,950 79 Racine SC Johnson & Sons
183 S. Curtis Johnson 1,950 54 Racine SC Johnson & Sons
183 Helen Johnson-Leipold 1,950 52 Racine SC Johnson & Sons
183 Winnie Johnson-Marquart 1,950 50 Virginia Beach SC Johnson & Sons
183 Walter Scott 1,950 78 Omaha construction, telecom
190 Archie (Red) Emmerson 1,900 80 Redding timberland, lumber ls
190 Robert Rich Jr. 1,900 68 Islamorada Rich Foods
193 Jess Jackson 1,850 79 Geyserville Jackson Fay Wines
193 Phillip Ruffin 1,850 74 Las Vegas casinos, real estate
196 Jerral Jones 1,800 67 Dallas Dallas Cowboys
196 Wilbur Ross 1,800 71 Palm Beach leveraged buyouts
196 Robert E. (Ted) Turner 1,800 70 Lamont cable television
202 Carl Henry Lindner Jr. & family 1,750 90 Cincinnati investments
202 Dean White 1,750 86 Crown Point lboards, hotels
204 John Edward Anderson 1,700 92 Bel Air investments
204 David Bonderman 1,700 66 Fort Worth leveraged buyouts
204 Jim Davis & family 1,700 66 Newton New Balance
204 Clayton Mathile 1,700 68 Dayton Iams
204 Thomas M. Siebel 1,700 56 Woodside Siebel Systems
212 Craig McCaw 1,650 60 Seattle McCaw Cellular
212 Frederick Smith 1,650 65 Memphis FedEx
212 Clemmie Dixon Spangler Jr. 1,650 77 Charlotte investments
212 Albert Ueltschi 1,650 92 Vero Beach FlightSafety
220 Austen S. Cargill II 1,600 58 Livingston Cargill Inc.
220 James R. Cargill II 1,600 60 Birchwood Cargill Inc.
220 Mary Janet Morse Cargill 1,600 85 Minneapolis Cargill Inc.
220 William Randolph Hearst III 1,600 60 San Francisco Hearst Corp
220 Marianne Cargill Liebmann 1,600 56 Bozeman Cargill, Inc.
230 Randal J. Kirk 1,550 55 Belspring pharmaceuticals
230 Charles Munger 1,550 85 Los Angeles Berkshire Hathaway
230 John Morgridge 1,550 76 Portola Valley Cisco ** (NETA with Jewish Agency)
236 Louis Bacon 1,500 51 London hedge funds
236 Edward Bass 1,500 64 Fort Worth oil, investments
236 Peter Buck 1,500 78 Danbury Subway
236 S. Truett Cathy 1,500 88 Atlanta Chick-fil-A
236 William E. Connor II 1,500 59 Hong Kong supply-chain services
236 Michael E. Heisley Sr. 1,500 72 Jupiter Island manufacturing
236 Jeffrey Hildebrand 1,500 50 Houston Oil
236 Brad Kelley 1,500 52 Nashville tobacco
236 William Koch 1,500 69 Palm Beach oil, investments
236 Henry Nicholas 1,500 50 Newport Coast Broadcom
236 Richard Peery 1,500 69 Palo Alto real estate
236 Trevor Rees-Jones 1,500 59 Dallas Oil
236 J. Christopher Reyes & family 1,500 55 Lake Forest Reyes Holdings
236 M. Jude Reyes & family 1,500 54 Kenilworth Reyes Holdings
236 David A. Rich 1,500 64 Jackson Rich Foods
272 Drayton McLane Jr. 1,450 73 Temple Wal-Mart, logistics
272 Jon Stryker 1,450 51 Kalamazoo Stryker Corp.
277 James Coulter 1,400 49 San Francisco leveraged buyouts
277 L. John Doerr 1,400 58 Woodside venture capital
277 Jonathan Nelson 1,400 53 Providence Leveraged buyouts
289 Gerald J. Ford 1,350 65 Dallas banking
289 Pat Stryker 1,350 53 Fort Collins Stryker Corp
289 Kelcy Warren 1,350 53 Dallas Pipelines
296 Carl Edwin Berg 1,300 72 Atherton real estate
296 Richard Chilton 1,300 51 Darien hedge funds
296 Phoebe Hearst Cooke 1,300 82 San Francisco Hearst Corp
296 David Filo 1,300 43 Palo Alto Yahoo
296 Marguerite Harbert 1,300 86 Birmingham inheritance
296 Austin Hearst 1,300 57 New York Hearst Corp
296 David Hearst Jr. 1,300 64 Los Angeles Hearst Corp
296 George Randolph Hearst Jr. 1,300 82 Los Angeles Hearst Corp
296 Stanley Hubbard 1,300 76 St. Paul DirecTV
296 B.J. (Red) McCombs 1,300 82 San Antonio radio, oil, real estate
296 S. Roger Penske 1,300 72 Birmingham cars
296 Patrick George Ryan 1,300 72 Winnetka insurance
317 Richard Hayne 1,250 62 Philadelphia Urban Outfitters
317 Henry Ross Perot Jr. 1,250 50 Dallas computer services, real estate
326 John E. Abele 1,200 72 Shelburne healthcare **
326 James Dinan 1,200 50 New York hedge funds
326 Barbara Carlson Gage & family 1,200 67 Minneapolis Carlson Cos.
326 J. Willard (Bill) Marriott 1,200 77 Potomac hotels
326 Richard Marriott 1,200 70 Potomac hotels
326 Robert McNair 1,200 72 Houston energy, sports
326 Marilyn Carlson Nelson & family 1,200 70 Minneapolis Carlson Cos
326 Todd Wagner 1,200 49 Dallas Broadcast.com
326 Margaret Whitman 1,200 53 Atherton Ebay
341 Kenneth Adams Jr. 1,150 86 Houston Oil
341 T. Boone Pickens 1,150 81 Dallas oil & gas, investments
341 George Steinbrenner 1,150 79 Tampa New York Yankees
347 Gary Burrell 1,100 72 Stilwell navigation equipment
347 A. James Clark 1,100 81 Easton Construction **
347 David Duffield 1,100 69 Danville PeopleSoft
347 Theodore Forstmann 1,100 69 New York leveraged buyouts
347 Christopher (Kit) Goldsbury 1,100 66 San Antonio salsa
347 Johnelle Hunt 1,100 77 Fayetteville transportation
347 William Macaulay 1,100 64 Greenwich energy investments
347 Richard Mellon Scaife 1,100 77 Pittsburgh investments
347 Charlotte Colket Weber 1,100 66 Ocala inheritance
366 Hamilton E. (Tony) James 1,050 58 New York Blackstone Group
366 Margaret Magerko 1,050 43 Belle Vernon 84 Lumber
366 William (Tex) Moncrief Jr. 1,050 89 Fort Worth oil
371 John Brown 1,000 75 Kalamazoo Stryker Corp.
371 Scott Cook 1,000 57 Woodside Intuit
371 Ray C. Davis 1,000 66 Dallas Pipelines
371 John Orin Edson 1,000 77 Seattle leisure craft
371 John Gordon & family 1,000 81 Grand Rapids Gordon Food Service
371 Donald Hall & family 1,000 81 Mission Hills Hallmark
371 Thomas Hicks 1,000 63 Dallas leveraged buyouts
371 William Kellogg 1,000 66 Menomonee Falls Kohl's
371 Aubrey McClendon 1,000 50 Oklahoma City natural gas
371 Malone Mitchell III 1,000 48 Oklahoma City oil & gas
371 J. Joseph Ricketts 1,000 68 Little Jackson Hole TD Ameritrade
371 T. Denny Sanford 1,000 73 Sioux Falls Banking, credit cards
371 Joyce Raley Teel 1,000 78 Sacramento supermarkets
371 Kenny Troutt 1,000 61 Dallas Excel Communications
392 Gary Magness 990 55 Denver cable, investments
392 Hope Hill van Beuren 990 75 Middletown inheritance
399 Dwight Schar 950 67 Palm Beach NVR Inc.
399 Sam Wyly 950 74 Dallas investments

Jewish / part-Jewish (142/400)
3 Lawrence Ellison 27,000 65 Redwood City Oracle
8 Michael Bloomberg 17,500 67 New York Bloomberg
11 Sergey Brin 15,300 36 Palo Alto Google
11 Larry Page 15,300 36 San Francisco Google (Jewish mother)
13 Michael Dell 14,500 44 Austin Dell
14 Steven Ballmer 13,300 53 Seattle Microsoft (Jewish mother)
15 George Soros 13,000 79 Westchester hedge funds
16 Donald Bren 12,000 77 Newport Beach real estate father is jewish
22 Carl Icahn 10,500 73 New York leveraged buyouts
23 Ronald Perelman 10,000 66 New York leveraged buyouts
24 George B. Kaiser 9,500 67 Tulsa oil & gas, banking
26 Sheldon Adelson 9,000 76 Las Vegas casinos, hotels
29 James Simons 8,500 71 East Setauket hedge funds
33 John Paulson 6,800 53 New York hedge funds
36 Steven Cohen 6,400 53 Greenwich hedge funds
42 Eli Broad 5,400 76 Los Angeles investments
44 Len Blavatnik 5,000 52 London Access Industries
44 David Geffen 5,000 66 Malibu movies, music
44 Ira Rennert 5,000 75 New York investments
49 Charles Ergen 4,900 56 Denver EchoStar **
50 Stephen Schwarzman 4,700 62 New York investments
52 Samuel I. (Si) Newhouse Jr. 4,500 81 New York publishing
56 Micky Arison 4,300 60 Bal Harbour Carnival Cruises
61 Ralph Lauren 4,200 70 New York fashion
65 Lester Crown & family 4,000 84 Wilmette investments
65 Richard LeFrak & family 4,000 64 New York real estate
65 Donald Newhouse 4,000 79 Somerset County publishing
65 Daniel Ziff 4,000 37 New York inheritance, hedge funds (Jewish grandfather)
65 Dirk Ziff 4,000 45 New York inheritance, hedge funds (Jewish grandfather)
65 Robert Ziff 4,000 43 New York inheritance, hedge funds (Jewish grandfather)
77 Henry Kravis 3,800 65 New York leveraged buyouts
77 Paul Milstein & family 3,800 87 New York Emigrant, real estate
77 Samuel Zell 3,800 68 Chicago real estate, private equity
84 Leonard N. Stern 3,600 71 New York real estate
85 Bruce Kovner 3,500 64 New York hedge funds
85 George Roberts 3,500 66 San Francisco leveraged buyouts
97 Leonard Lauder 3,000 76 New York Estee Lauder
97 Theodore Lerner 3,000 84 Washington real estate
97 Steven Spielberg 3,000 62 Pacific Palisades movies
97 David Tepper 3,000 52 Milburn hedge funds
110 Stephen Ross 2,900 69 New York real estate
113 Daniel Och 2,800 48 New York hedge funds
113 Haim Saban 2,800 65 Beverly Hills television
118 Joan Tisch 2,600 83 New York Loews
123 Edgar M. Bronfman 2,500 80 New York liquor
123 Edward Lampert 2,500 47 Greenwich investments
123 Ronald Lauder 2,500 65 New York Estee Lauder
123 Mitchell Rales 2,500 53 Washington Danaher Corp **
123 Steven Rales 2,500 58 Washington Danaher Corp **
123 David Rubenstein 2,500 60 Bethesda leveraged buyouts
123 David E. Shaw 2,500 58 New York hedge funds
139 Mark Cuban 2,400 51 Dallas Broadcast.com
139 Malcolm Glazer & family 2,400 81 Palm Beach sports teams, real estate
141 Steve Wynn 2,300 67 Las Vegas casinos, hotels **
147 Bruce Wasserstein 2,200 61 New York Wasserstein Perella, Lazard
158 Nicolas Berggruen 2,000 48 New York Investments (Jewish father)
158 Leon Black 2,000 58 New York leveraged buyouts
158 Michael Milken 2,000 63 Los Angeles investments
158 Sumner Redstone 2,000 86 Beverly Hills Viacom
158 Leslie Wexner 2,000 72 New Albany Limited Brands
158 Mark Zuckerberg 2,000 25 Palo Alto Facebook
158 Phillip Frost 2,000 72 Miami pharmaceuticals
183 Stewart Rahr 1,950 63 New York Kinray
193 Alan Casden 1,850 63 Beverly Hills real estate
196 Thomas Pritzker 1,800 59 Chicago hotels, investments
196 Jerry Speyer 1,800 69 New York real estate
204 Israel Englander 1,700 61 New York hedge funds
204 Penny Pritzker 1,700 50 Chicago hotels, investments
204 Sheldon Solow 1,700 81 New York real estate
212 Robert Friedland 1,650 59 Singapore mining
212 Henry Samueli 1,650 55 Newport Beach Broadcom
220 Thomas Friedkin 1,600 74 Houston Gulf States Toyota
220 Irwin Jacobs 1,600 76 La Jolla Qualcomm
220 Anthony Pritzker 1,600 48 Los Angeles hotels, investments
220 Jay Robert Pritzker 1,600 44 Evanston hotels, investments
230 Isaac Perlmutter 1,550 67 Palm Beach Marvel
230 Wilma Tisch 1,550 82 New York Loews
236 Neil Bluhm 1,500 71 Chicago real estate
236 Robert Kraft 1,500 68 Brookline New England Patriots
236 Stephen Mandel 1,500 53 Greenwich hedge funds
236 Daniel Pritzker 1,500 50 Marin County hotels, investments
236 James Pritzker 1,500 58 Chicago hotels, investments
236 Jean (Gigi) Pritzker 1,500 47 Chicago hotels, investments
236 John Pritzker 1,500 56 San Francisco hotels, investments
236 Karen Pritzker 1,500 51 New Haven hotels, investments
236 Linda Pritzker 1,500 55 St. Ignatius hotels, investments
236 Marc Rich 1,500 74 Meggen commodities
236 Lynn Schusterman 1,500 70 Tulsa oil & gas, investments
236 John Sperling 1,500 88 Phoenix Apollo Group
236 Mortimer Zuckerman 1,500 72 New York real estate, media
272 George Lindemann & family 1,450 73 Palm Beach investments
272 Bernard Marcus 1,450 80 Atlanta Home Depot
277 S. Daniel Abraham 1,400 85 Palm Beach Slim-Fast
277 Alfred Mann 1,400 83 Los Angeles medical devices
277 Michael Moritz 1,400 55 Mountain View venture capital
277 Michael Price 1,400 57 Far Hills investments
277 Tamir Sapir 1,400 62 New York real estate
277 Alfred Taubman 1,400 85 Bloomfield Hills real estate
289 Ken Fisher 1,350 58 Woodside Money management **
289 David Gottesman 1,350 83 Rye investments
289 Marc Lasry 1,350 49 New York hedge funds (92nd Street Y)
296 Edmund Ansin 1,300 73 Miami Sunbeam Broadcasting
296 Ron Baron 1,300 66 New York money management
296 Leon Charney 1,300 68 New York Real estate
296 Glenn Dubin 1,300 52 New York hedge funds
296 Donald Fisher 1,300 81 San Francisco Gap
296 Doris Fisher 1,300 78 San Francisco Gap
296 Jeremy Jacobs Sr. 1,300 69 East Aurora sports concessions
296 Gary Michelson 1,300 60 Los Angeles medical patents
317 Arthur Blank 1,250 67 Atlanta Home Depot
317 Jeffrey Greene 1,250 54 Miami Beach real estate, investments
317 Thomas H. Lee 1,250 65 New York leveraged buyouts
317 Herbert Simon 1,250 74 Indianapolis real estate
317 Peter Sperling 1,250 49 Phoenix Apollo Group
326 Norman Braman 1,200 77 Miami art, car dealerships
326 John Fisher 1,200 48 San Francisco Gap
326 Nicholas Pritzker 1,200 65 Chicago hotels, investments
326 Alexander Rovt 1,200 57 Brooklyn fertilizer
341 Leon Cooperman 1,150 66 Short Hills hedge funds
341 Barry Diller 1,150 67 New York IAC/InterActiveCorp
347 Marc Benioff 1,100 45 San Francisco Salesforce.com
347 Robert Fisher 1,100 56 San Francisco Gap
347 Alan Gerry 1,100 80 Liberty cable television**
347 James Irsay 1,100 50 Carmel Indianapolis Colts (Father, Bob was Jewish)
347 Michael Krasny 1,100 56 Highland Park CDW Corp 3
347 Daniel Snyder 1,100 44 Potomac Washington Redskins
347 Henry Swieca 1,100 52 New York hedge funds
366 Peter Lewis 1,050 75 Coconut Grove Progressive Corp
366 Nelson Peltz 1,050 67 Bedford Investments
371 William Fisher 1,000 52 San Francisco Gap
371 Pincus Green 1,000 74 Jerusalem commodities
371 Jeffry Picower 1,000 67 Palm Beach investments
371 Steven Schonfeld 1,000 50 Westbury Proprietary Trading
371 Walter Shorenstein & family 1,000 94 San Francisco real estate
371 Evgeny (Eugene) Shvidler 1,000 45 London Millhouse LLC
371 Charles Zegar 1,000 61 New York Bloomberg LP
394 Jeffrey Lurie 980 58 Haverford Philadelphia Eagles
396 Nancy Lerner 960 49 Cleveland inheritance
396 Norma Lerner 960 73 Cleveland inheritance
396 Randolph Lerner 960 47 Cleveland inheritance

Italian (14/400)
65 Ray Dalio 4,000 60 Greenwich hedge funds [?]
65 John Paul DeJoria 4,000 65 Austin hair products, tequila [half-Italian, half-Greek]
123 Daniel D'Aniello 2,500 63 Vienna leveraged buyouts
123 John A. Sobrato 2,500 70 Atherton real estate
141 James Leprino 2,300 71 Denver cheese
154 A. Jerrold Perenchio 2,100 78 Bel Air Univision
158 Philip Falcone 2,000 46 New York hedge funds
230 Stephen Bisciotti 1,550 49 Millersville outsourcing, football
236 Fred DeLuca 1,500 62 Fort Lauderdale Subway
289 Thomas Golisano 1,350 67 Naples Paychex
317 Edward DeBartolo Jr. 1,250 62 Tampa shopping centers
326 Leandro Rizzuto 1,200 71 Sheridan Conair
326 Thomas Secunda 1,200 55 Croton-on-Hudson Bloomberg [?]
341 Joseph Mansueto 1,150 53 Chicago Morningstar **

East Asian (8/400)
65 Patrick Soon-Shiong 4,000 57 Los Angeles generic drugs
118 Victor Fung & family 2,600 63 Hong Kong distribution
123 David Sun 2,500 58 Orange County computer memory
123 John Tu 2,500 67 Los Angeles computer memory
158 Roger Wang 2,000 60 Nanjing retail
196 Min Kao 1,800 60 Mission Hills navigation equipment
236 James Kim & family 1,500 73 Bryn Mawr microchips
317 Jerry Yang 1,250 40 Los Altos Hills Yahoo

Middle Eastern (7/400)
40 Pierre Omidyar 5,500 42 Honolulu Ebay [Iranian]
43 Steve Jobs 5,100 54 Palo Alto Apple Computer, Pixar [half-Syrian]
97 Kirk Kerkorian 3,000 92 Los Angeles investments, casinos [Armenian]
123 Richard Rainwater 2,500 65 Fort Worth real estate, energy, insurance [half-Lebanese]
147 Tom Gores 2,200 45 Beverly Hills leveraged buyouts
220 Alec Gores 1,600 56 Beverly Hills leveraged buyouts
236 Joseph Jamail 1,500 84 Houston lawsuits [Lebanese]
296 Manuel Moroun & family 1,300 82 Grosse Pointe Shores Transportation [Arab]
347 Thomas Barrack 1,100 62 Los Angeles Colony Capital [Lebanese]

Eastern European (6/400)
113 Barbara Piasecka Johnson 2,800 72 Monte Carlo inheritance [Polish]
123 Steven Udvar-Hazy 2,500 63 Beverly Hills International Lease Finance [Hungarian]
236 Igor Olenicoff 1,500 67 Lighthouse Point real estate [Russian?]
236 Thomas Peterffy 1,500 65 Greenwich Interactive Brokers Group [Hungarian]
236 Edward Roski Jr. 1,500 70 Los Angeles real estate [Polish]
277 Michael Ilitch & family 1,400 80 Detroit pizza [Macedonian]

Greek (6/400)
158 George Phydias Mitchell 2,000 90 The Woodlands Mitchell Energy
158 Peter Peterson 2,000 83 New York Blackstone Group
190 Michael Jaharis 1,900 81 New York pharmaceuticals
212 John Catsimatidis 1,650 61 New York oil, real estate, supermarkets
236 George Argyros 1,500 72 Newport Beach real estate, investments
347 Alexander Spanos & family 1,100 86 Stockton real estate

South Asian (5/400)
212 Bharat Desai & family 1,650 56 Fisher Island Syntel [Brahmin]
236 Raj Rajaratnam 1,500 52 New York hedge funds [Sri Lanka; Tamil merchant]
272 Kavitark Ram Shriram 1,450 52 Mountain View Venture capital, Google [Brahmin]
277 Romesh Wadhwani & family 1,400 62 Palo Alto Software [Sindhi merchant]
347 Vinod Khosla 1,100 54 Menlo Park Sun Microsystems, venture capital [Punjabi Khatri merchant]

Hispanic (2/400)
277 John Arrillaga 1,400 72 Palo Alto real estate [Basque]
395 Arte Moreno 970 63 Phoenix lboards [Mexican]

Black (1/400)
141 Oprah Winfrey 2,300 55 Chicago television

Ancestry of Meg Whitman

Steve Sailer mentions that Jacob Berkman includes Meg Whitman in a list of Forbes 400 Jews ("At least 139 of the Forbes 400 are Jewish"). Google also turns up several previous instances of Jews listing Whitman as a Jew. I find this bizarre. Whitman is Presbyterian, has no Jewish ancestry, and doesn't look remotely Jewish. Her husband's parents are Presbyterian Southerners.

Edit: Removed ahnentafel for Meg Whitman. Someone has already put up a more complete listing of Whitman's ancestors here.

Autosomal DNA and genetic genealogy

Blaine Bettinger has some interesting posts up:

• The Future of Genetic Genealogy – Tracing DNA To Individual Ancestor
• A New Tool For Genetic Genealogists: 23andMe’s Relative Finder
  
• 23andMe’s Relative Finder Success Stories at ISOGG
  

Columbus Day

Columbus lived and died a faithful child of the Church; he carried the Cross to America, — indeed, he carried it there in every sense of the phrase ; he opened the way to the conversion of millions to the Faith : and for these and other reasons it might be meet that his name should be inscribed in the roll of Catholic Saints. That concerns Rome only. But, when the act of canonization is performed, there seems no adequate reason why the descendants of English Puritans, Dutch Lutherans, and French Huguenots—still believing in those principles of civil and religious liberty for which their fathers strove — should join with any peculiar zeal in the sanctification of one whose special heavenly mission, if he indeed had such a mission, was to jeopardize every human being from whom they can trace origin, and every principle of thought or action in which they have faith. A silent acquiescence is, under such circumstances, all that could reasonably be asked of them. They are at least under no call to lead the loud acclaim.

Charles Francis Adams. Columbus and the Spanish Discovery of America.

Ancestry and civic engagement

Jason Richwine writes:

Now “Calvinist” is a scary word in social policy, but I am strongly inclined to believe that civic engagement is biologically influenced, to a nontrivial extent. One of the foundations of behavioral genetics is that all basic personality traits—intelligence, extroversion, cooperativeness, sense of humor, etc.—are partially determined by heredity. Since people’s behavior obviously affects the kinds of societies they build, the connection between genes and social capital is not hard to make.

Consider the findings of Tom Rice and Jan Feldman, who compared levels of civic engagement among European ancestral groups in the United States. They found significant group differences, which track quite neatly with the same differences found among European countries today. In other words, Swedes are more civic than Italians, whether they still live in Europe or have long since moved to America! There is a highly persistent ethnic effect on social capital.

One could construct a purely cultural explanation for this, but it would be a stretch.

A graph from the paper I assume Richwine is referring to:

Source: Tom W. Rice and Jan L. Feldman. Civic Culture and Democracy from Europe to America. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Nov., 1997), pp. 1143-1172.

Europeans being selected to prefer low carbohydrate diets

Interesting:

Variants in Neuropeptide Y Receptor 1 and 5 Are Associated with Nutrient-Specific Food Intake and Are Under Recent Selection in Europeans

Clara C. Elbers et al.

There is a large variation in caloric intake and macronutrient preference between individuals and between ethnic groups, and these food intake patterns show a strong heritability. The transition to new food sources during the agriculture revolution around 11,000 years ago probably created selective pressure and shaped the genome of modern humans. One major player in energy homeostasis is the appetite-stimulating hormone neuropeptide Y, in which the stimulatory capacity may be mediated by the neuropeptide Y receptors 1, 2 and 5 (NPY1R, NPY2R and NPY5R). We assess association between variants in the NPY1R, NPY2R and NPY5R genes and nutrient intake in a cross-sectional, single-center study of 400 men aged 40 to 80 years, and we examine whether genomic regions containing these genes show signatures of recent selection in 270 HapMap individuals (90 Africans, 90 Asians, and 90 Caucasians) and in 846 Dutch bloodbank controls. Our results show that derived alleles in NPY1R and NPY5R are associated with lower carbohydrate intake, mainly because of a lower consumption of mono- and disaccharides. We also show that carriers of these derived alleles, on average, consume meals with a lower glycemic index and glycemic load and have higher alcohol consumption. One of these variants shows the hallmark of recent selection in Europe. Our data suggest that lower carbohydrate intake, consuming meals with a low glycemic index and glycemic load, and/or higher alcohol consumption, gave a survival advantage in Europeans since the agricultural revolution. This advantage could lie in overall health benefits, because lower carbohydrate intake, consuming meals with a low GI and GL, and/or higher alcohol consumption, are known to be associated with a lower risk of chronic diseases.

DNA tests probe the genomic ancestry of Brazilians

"White" Brazilians average ~70-80% European ancestry depending on the region (full text).

Studies with autosomal biparental markers reveal very elevated levels of genetic admixture between the three ancestral roots. However, it is also evident that there was an important population effect of the program of “whitening” of Brazil promoted through the immigration of circa six million Europeans in the roughly 100-year period after 1872. This manifests itself both in a predominant (>70%) European genomic ancestry in Brazilian Whites regardless of geographical region and in a high average European genomic ancestry (37.1%) in Brazilian Blacks.

Upcoming autosomal study of descendants of early New Englanders?

I'm not a fan of Bryan Sykes, but more data is always good -- and who knows if another study like this will ever be funded.

Participants Sought for a Boston-area Genetics Study, September 14–18

For a significant research project, Professor Bryan Sykes, the Oxford-based geneticist, will be collecting data in collaboration with NEHGS in the Boston area the week of September 14–18. He is interested in identifying documented descendants of early (pre-1700) immigrants to New England – and the more lines of descent from early New Englanders the participant has, the better. Professor Sykes would also like to hear from people who know, or suspect, that they have New England Native American ancestry.

People selected for this study will take part in a 1–2 hour meeting, possibly in their homes, and should be prepared to have their DNA tested. They must also be available for consultation (by phone or email) for feedback after the genetic results are available. Those participating should be available in the Boston area during the week of September 14–18.

If you meet these criteria and are interested in participating, please send the following information to bryan.sykes@wolfson.ox.ac.uk.

1. Your name and town.
2. A brief summary of your New England ancestry including the patrilineal and matrilineal elements.
3. If you have New England Native American ancestry, identify the tribe and briefly (100 words or less) summarize your documentation;
4. Provide an estimate of what percentage of your pre-1700 ancestors lived in New England;
5. When you would be available during the week of September 14–18.
6. Your email address and telephone number during the week of September 14–18.

Those selected to be included in the project will be contacted via email.

Based on the type of participants they're seeking and the information they ask for, I assume they'll be analyzing autosomal DNA in addition to Y and mtDNA.

Teutoburger Wald 2000th anniversary today

Steve McNallen:

Two thousand years ago this day, the Germans struck for their freedom and for their very existence as a people! // It was a step forward - a handful of tribes united, for a limited time. Germany was not yet a coherent nation, but a beginning had been made.

Elsewhere:

But modern Germans are cautious about celebrating this battle and the man. Adolf Hitler used his legend to forward the propaganda of the Third Reich. Because of this baggage, many Germans don’t even know about him; this part of German history is not taught in many schools. And during a recent modern re-enactment of the battle with Chancellor Merkel in attendance, the organizers were hard pressed to find any Germans who wanted to play the ancient Germans.

[. . .] It was Martin Luther himself who gave Hermann his name and deemed him a worthy heir apparent for the job of nation builder. During Luther’s time, Germany was not a united country [. . .] Arminius’ win at the Battle of Teutoberg [. . .] was just what the then splintered nation needed to unite into one nation—at least in Luther’s estimation.

SMGF adding genome-wide SNP data?

Something new I got out of Scott Woodward's Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation presentation (slides) at the DTC Genetic Testing Workshop is that SMGF has Affymetrix 6.0 data for 300 samples. SMGF is best known for their Y-STR database, but the original aim was to connect autosomal markers and pedigree data. I didn't see how they could do much in this direction with the handful of autosomal STRs they were typing, but if they end up typing a large proportion of their 108,000 samples for ~1 million SNPs, I could see interesting things happening.

Out of Africa, back to Africa, out again?

Update: John Hawks comments.

An article published today in the Daily Mail proclaims "Ancient skeletons discovered in Georgia threaten to overturn the theory of human evolution":

The first Dmanisi fossils were found in 2001. The most recent has only just been unearthed and its details have yet to be published in a scientific journal.

Prof Lordkipanidze said the Dmanisi bones may have belonged to an early Homo erectus which lived in Georgia before moving on to the rest of Europe.

Or the early humans may then have returned to Africa, eventually giving rise to our own species, Homoe sapiens, he said.

'The question is whether Homo erectus orginated in Africa or Eurasia, and if in Eurasia, did we have vice-versa migrations? This idea looked very stupid a few years ago, but not today,' he told the British Science Festival.

This scenario is not contradicted by modern human Y or mtDNA phylogenetics, which say nothing about where the ancestors of modern humans lived prior to the time when these uniparental lineages coalesce (80,000-160,000 years ago).

Prostate cancer as sexually transmitted disease?

The Scientist reports:

Prostate cancer is increasingly looking like an infectious disease, and may be sexually transmitted Mounting evidence suggests that prostate cancer is an infectious disease caused by a recently identified virus. The latest report, published today (September 7) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found the virus was associated especially with aggressive prostate cancers [. . .] The suspect is xenotropic murine leukemia-related virus (XMRV), a gammaretrovirus similar to viruses known to cause cancer in animals.

A few people have attempted to use black-white differences in prostate cancer risk as evidence in favor of black-white differences in androgen exposure. This was always a backward and circular argument (prostate cancer researchers were responsible for the attempts to demonstrate higher androgen levels in black males in the first place). Various factors may contribute to elevated black prostate cancer risk (e.g., higher estrogen levels and genetic differences unrelated to androgen pathways), but this is probably a big one. Promiscuity is associated with prostate cancer in African-American men.

The Peopling of Europe

This appears to be an up-to-date summary of much of the genetic, archaeological, linguistic, and skeletal evidence relating to the origins or Europeans. The site also includes a table of ancient DNA results.

NatGeo: "The Human Family Tree"

The worst documentary of its kind yet: a two-hour ad for the Genographic project public participation component, heavy on the we are one / race doesn't exist message. If you thought The Journey of Man would have been great if only it contained vignettes from the lives of vibrant Queens residents (preferably involved in mixed-race relationships), you'll love The Human Family Tree.

Despite six years and tens of millions of dollars in funding, Spencer Wells relays scientific "facts" essentially identical to those he reported in his 2003 effort -- many of these facts being outdated (the idea that R1b is a marker of Paleolithic western European ancestry) or incorrect ("we're all 99.9% the same genetically").

On the positive side, the sloppy editing and narration may provoke some cognitive dissonance in the brighter race deniers who view the program. After some "survival of the fittest" talk (albeit in the context of Africa), after we're introduced to the ideas of climatic and sexual selection, and after we're told the ancestors of Europeans "toughened up" in the harsh climate of Central Asia, Kevin Bacon intones:

Like all of our other physical differences, the genetic changes responsible for our varying shades of color are minuscule. [. . .] For all the problems race has caused, our differences are literally not more than skin deep. Genetically speaking, race does not exist. Without those minuscule changes, though, people might never have survived in these northern latitudes. And that means, we might never have carried on to populate the rest of the world.

And later:

As the world grows increasingly smaller, babies like Leah are becoming the norm. Traits that formed over thousands of generations are being wiped clean in just a few. While cultural barriers continue to fall, biologically we know these barriers never existed in the first place.

If you feel the need to watch a program in this genre, The Incredible Human Journey is a better choice. The episodes on Europe and Asia at least feature a few interesting locations and artifacts, along with some (ultimately dismissive) discussion of multiregionalism.