"Small is Beautiful: Genetic Studies in the Founder Population of Iceland"

Reports on a talk at the 1000 Genomes Project meeting a couple days ago:

13 Jul Nicolas Robine Nicolas Robine ?@notSoJunkDNA Augustine Kong (deCode Genetics) at #1000genomes

13 Jul Karol Estrada Karol Estrada ?@karls_es Augustine Kong: deCode has genotyped 100,000 samples, and whole-genome sequenced 2,200 samples #1000genomes

13 Jul Nicolas Robine Nicolas Robine ?@notSoJunkDNA AK: 100k chip-typed individuas to study "recombination as a phenotype", and examine "transmission distortion" #1000genomes

13 Jul Goncalo Abecasis Goncalo Abecasis ?@gabecasis Augustine Kong talks about gene mapping in Iceland. A population that is just the right size. Definitely not too small. #1000genomes

13 Jul Karol Estrada Karol Estrada ?@karls_es AK: imputations with 2200 seq. individuals have high accuracy (r^2>0.90 for variants down to 0.1%! #1000genomes

13 Jul Goncalo Abecasis Goncalo Abecasis ?@gabecasis AK: Rate of mutation doubles with every 16 year increase in paternal age. #1000genomes

13 Jul Karol Estrada Karol Estrada ?@karls_es AK: Genomic segments of Norwegian ancestry have 8 fold more singletons than average in deCode's dataset #1000genomes

Alex Forrest-Hay ?@aforre #1000genomes Augustine Kong: 400k SNPs would cover the Icelandic genome sufficiently to enable accurate imputation

Interview with Kari Stefansson:

We have sequenced the whole genomes of 2,500 people. We have genotyped about 120,000 Icelanders with an Illumina chip. We can impute whole genome sequence down to variants with less than 0.1% frequency into about 370,000 Icelanders -- there are only 320,000 living today!”

“We basically have the whole genome sequence of an entire nation.”

Margaret Sanger as Yankee utopian progressive

Margaret Sanger, daughter of Irish Catholics; married first to a Jew; then to a South African; influenced by and conduit of happenings in Europe; also, a "Yankee" and proof that "progressivism" is best conceived of as an offshoot of New England Puritanism.

More of an activist than her father, Bill had recently joined a Socialist Party local in the Bronx, where he lived with his father, Edward Ely Sanger; his mother, Henrietta Wolfberg; and his younger sister, Cecilia. Most heretically appealing for the rebellious daughter of a Catholic from a town without a synagogue, William Sanger was a Jew--by heritage, not conviction.

The Sangers had emigrated from Berlin in 1878 when William was four years old. His father represented a growing stream of Jewish immigrants from Germany as well as, in greater numbers, Eastern Europe, pushed across the Atlantic by increasing pressure from the Prussian state. When the census taker came to their apartment in the Nineteenth Ward two years after their arrival, in 1880, Bill Sanger's father gave his name as Edward, a proper Anglo-Saxon name, and his occupation as a wool manufacturer. Twenty years later, living in a diverse neighborhood of mostly German Jews who sold real estate and insurance, he was listed as Elzia, an unusual contraction of the Hebrew name Eleazar.

At first, Maggie Higgins and Bill Sanger shared their alien status: she the migratory, rebellious daughter of a poor Catholic family, he a Jewish immigrant still living at home at twenty-six years of age. The, for the rest of their lives, they both obscured the facts of his family heritage, which became easier to do when his father died in 1903. Finding Bill's background exotic at first, she later erased it, lest it compromise the fragile birth control movement and her credibility to lead it. To be married to a Jew in the first decades of the twentieth century was to be associated with the radical political views of socialists and to invite the pervasive smear of anti-Semitism. [. . .]

In her Autobiography, Margaret Sanger transformed her father-in-law, Elzia, a wool manufacturer in the garment industry in New York, into Edward, a wealthy English sheep rancher who had moved to Australia. During one of his trips to Europe, through he was sixteen years her senior, Edward had fallen in love with the mayor Konigsberg's fourteen-year-old daughter, Henrietta. Smitten, he had waited for her to grow up and then returned to marry her.

[Jean H. Baker. Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion]

Haplogroups as evolutionary markers of cognitive ability

A reader emails a link (pdf) to a recent paper from Rindermann:

Studies investigating evolutionary theories on the origins of national differences in intelligence have been criticized on the basis that both national cognitive ability measures and supposedly evolutionarily informative proxies (such as latitude and climate) are confounded with general developmental status. In this study 14 Y chromosomal haplogroups (N = 47 countries) are employed as evolutionary markers. These are (most probably) not intelligence coding genes, but proxies of evolutionary development with potential relevance to cognitive ability. Correlations and regression analyses with a general developmental indicator (HDI) revealed that seven haplogroups were empirically important predictors of national cognitive ability (I, R1a, R1b, N, J1, E, T[+L]). Based on their evolutionary meaning and correlation with cognitive ability these haplogroups were grouped into two sets. Combined, they accounted in a regression and path analyses for 32–51% of the variance in national intelligence relative to the developmental indicator (35–58%). This pattern was replicated internationally with further controls (e.g. latitude, spatial autocorrelation etc.) and at the regional level in two independent samples (within Italy and Spain). These findings, using a conservative estimate of evolutionary influences, provide support for a mixed influence on national cognitive ability stemming from both current environmental and past environmental (evolutionary) factors.

The association with cognitive ability is positive for haplogroups I, R1a, R1b, and N and negative for J1, E, and T[+L], a pattern that also holds within Spain and Italy.

I1 arose in southern Scandinavia between 4000 and 6000 years ago (Rootsi et al., 2004). R1a and R1b arose in southwestern Asia (Caucasus, Pontic–Caspian steppe, Kurgan culture) around 22,000 ybp or somewhat later at 18,500 ybp. N and its relevant European subclades arose in Siberia and central Asia 12–27,000 ybp (Rootsi et al., 2007). This suggests that these environments may have been evolutionarily significant for cognitive ability: The presence of environmental harshness (i.e. extreme winter cold) suggests that factors relevant to the cold winters theory could have contributed to an increase in intelligence among the ancestors of those possessing these haplogroups. It is also likely that factors such as the development of agriculture, tools and dairy farming (milk from horses and cattle around 6000 ybp) were themselves an evolutionary catalyst for increasing cognitive ability (Cochran & Harpending, 2009; Hawks, Wang, Cochran, Harpending, & Moyzis, 2007; Wade, 2006), possibly enhancing neurological maturation via the provision of better nutrition during pregnancy, in youth and adulthood. The Neolithic transition to agriculture in cold climates would have been particularly evolutionarily demanding in terms of the need for heightened cognitive resources (e.g. farsightedness and planning).

[. . .]

Finally the steppe presents an unprotected environment, people living in such an environment are different to the people living in mountains, near to large oceans, in dense forests or in oases surrounded by large deserts, as they are permanently in danger of being attacked by neighboring peoples. This challenge could have selected for enhanced military preparedness a component of which may have been higher cognitive ability.

John Hawks intro physical anthropology course

Principles of Biological Anthropology. This has been up for a while, but apparently Hawks may be removing the videos in the near future, so watch soon if interested.

Hawks also has a teaching company course.

Michael Hammer on archaic admixture in Africa

Open thread (8)

Links, off-topic discussion, etc. Previous open threads: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Men With Wider Faces Are More Generous to Their In-Group When Out-Group Competition Is Salient

Face Structure Predicts Cooperation: Men With Wider Faces Are More Generous to Their In-Group When Out-Group Competition Is Salient (abstract):

Male facial width-to-height ratio appears to correlate with antisocial tendencies, such as aggression, exploitation, cheating, and deception. We present evidence that male facial width-to-height ratio is also associated with a stereotypically male prosocial tendency: to increase cooperation with other in-group members during intergroup competition. We found that men who had wider faces, compared with men who had narrower faces, showed more self-sacrificing cooperation to help their group members when there was competition with another group. We propose that this finding makes sense given the evolutionary functions of social helpfulness and aggression.

Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis

Free pdf here:

Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis
Melissa M. McDonald1,*,
Carlos David Navarrete1 and
Mark Van Vugt2,3

The social science literature contains numerous examples of human tribalism and parochialism—the tendency to categorize individuals on the basis of their group membership, and treat ingroup members benevolently and outgroup members malevolently. We hypothesize that this tribal inclination is an adaptive response to the threat of coalitional aggression and intergroup conflict perpetrated by ‘warrior males’ in both ancestral and modern human environments. Here, we describe how male coalitional aggression could have affected the social psychologies of men and women differently and present preliminary evidence from experimental social psychological studies testing various predictions from the ‘male warrior’ hypothesis. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of our research for studying intergroup relations both in humans and non-humans and discuss some practical implications.

TEDxCambridge: George Church on genomics and human diversity

"George Church considers recent advances in genomics and personalized medicine and asks: as we seek to eliminate disorders like schizophrenia and dyslexia, or even rare genetic diseases, how should we think about preserving human diversity?"

Slide at 7:20:

"Rare [does not necessarily equal] Deleterious

MSTN: Lean muscles
LRP5: Extra-strong bones
PCSK9: Greatly reduced risk of heart disease
CCR5: Virus-resistance

Embrace the extremes: informative, easy, powerful"

Conclusion: "So anyway we and others are sequencing these long-lived animals and humans and we hope this will be part of a bigger project to measure and design humans going forward."

Eske Willerslev at the 2012 DOE JGI Genomics of Energy and Environment Meeting

'Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen on "Understanding Historical Human Migration Patterns and Interbreeding Using the Ancient Genomes of a Palaeo-Eskimo and an Aboriginal Australian" at the 7th Annual Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting on March 21, 2012 in Walnut Creek, Calif.'

"Asians are closer to Europeans than they are to aboriginal Australians, but at the same time aborigine Australians are closer to Asians than they are to Europeans." (23:10)

At the end, Willerslev mentions "we are also doing the genome of Clovis, the oldest skeleton in the Americas". I have no idea which skeleton in particular he's talking about, but any Paleo-Indian genome should be informative.

New York Times science writer Carl Zimmer: Oetzi genome "not important"

Ken Weiss links to this speech by Carl Zimmer.

"As I recall, the big news in the Oetzi genome I think was that he had brown eyes. I mean it just . . . it doesn't . . . that's not important." (31:42)

Obviously, that was not the biggest news to those who were paying attention. But even if it had been, I'd still be taken aback by a comment like this from a science reporter. In fairness, Zimmer's talk overall is reasonable and inoffensive compared to Weiss's blog post, and does not appear to be motivated by the same racial anxieties:

So just to conclude I would say that my experience in writing about genomes has firmly convinced me that we are in the middle of another scientific revolution like the one in the middle of the 17th century and that genomes are a big part of that. But it's important to focus on what makes that revolution so important. So in the 1600s, for example, one of the most important things that happened was the people invented microscopes. [. . .] But again it wasn't so much the microscopes themselves that mattered, but what people were seeing with them.

Some asshole named "Ken Weiss" wants whole genome sequencing to go away

Is whole genome sequencing fading? Will it rebound (or relapse)?

There are various informal indicators that funders are losing enthusiasm for human whole genome sequencing. [. . .] If this turns out to be more than a few anecdotes or personal opinions, and is actually occurring, it's understandable and to be lauded. As we think we can truthfully claim, we have for years been warning of the dangers of the kind of overkill that genomics (and, indeed, other 'omics' fads) present: promise miracles and you had better deliver!

The same thing applies to evolutionary studies that seek whole genome sequences as well as to studies designed to use such data to predict individual diseases. There are too many variants to sort through, the individual signal is too weak, and too many parts of the genome contribute to many if not most traits, for genomes to be all that important--whether for predicting future disease, normal phenotypes like behaviors, or fitness in the face of natural selection.

The proper response to genomic complexity is of course not to throw ones hands up and go back to candidate gene studies, but to sequence lots and lots of genomes in full. This is what needs to happen, and falling sequencing costs mean this is what will happen, regardless of what Ken Weiss wants.

Note: Ken Weiss is "Evan Pugh Professor of Anthropology and Genetics at Penn State University". I can think of a few possibilities: (1) Weiss is sincere in believing medical science and evolutionary research would be better advanced with less whole genome sequencing; he's not malicious -- just short-sighted, unimaginative, and breathtakingly ignorant of the broader state of his supposed academic specialty. (2) Weiss is merely jealous that his colleagues are getting bigger grants than him, a frailty he could perhaps be forgiven. (3) "Anthropology and Genetics" professor Weiss, for some reason, prefers that human evolutionary and genetics research not advance.

Looking at some of his other posts, I see plenty of evidence ethnic and/or ideological considerations underpin Weiss's "warnings" about genomics.

Analysis of surname origins identifies genetic admixture events undetectable from genealogical records

In the name of the migrant father—Analysis of surname origins identifies genetic admixture events undetectable from genealogical records

M H D Larmuseau et al.

Patrilineal heritable surnames are widely used to select autochthonous participants for studies on small-scale population genetic patterns owing to the unique link between the surname and a genetic marker, the Y-chromosome (Y-chr). Today, the question arises as to whether the surname origin will be informative on top of in-depth genealogical pedigrees. Admixture events that happened in the period after giving heritable surnames but before the start of genealogical records may be informative about the additional value of the surname origin. In this context, an interesting historical event is the demic migration from French-speaking regions in Northern France to the depopulated and Dutch-speaking region Flanders at the end of the sixteenth century. Y-chr subhaplogroups of individuals with a French/Roman surname that could be associated with this migration event were compared with those of a group with autochthonous Flemish surnames. Although these groups could not be differentiated based on in-depth genealogical data, they were significantly genetically different from each other. Moreover, the observed genetic divergence was related to the differences in the distributions of main Y-subhaplogroups between contemporary populations from Northern France and Flanders. Therefore, these results indicate that the surname origin can be an important feature on top of in-depth genealogical results to select autochthonous participants for a regional population genetic study based on Y-chromosomes.

Keywords: admixture; genetic genealogy; historical gene flow; human population structure; Y-chromosome

http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/hdy201217a.html

Ten Quite Interesting Things About Intelligence Test Scores - Prof. Ian Deary

"Doing research on intelligence is fascinating, and also sometimes frustrating. Like being a meteorologist, when you tell someone you work on intelligence you find that they start telling you about your own topic. So, Prof Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh thinks that it is useful show people some real data that come from intelligence tests; opinions can then be founded on data, or at least one can query the data-gathering or its interpretations.

Without making assumptions about what intelligence tests measure or why people differ in their scores, he presents some results and invites people's reactions to them. He is still surprised by the fact that sitting down with one of these tests for three quarters of an hour or so and getting a score can have such far-reaching predictions, and cause so many arguments."

Miscellaneous links

Larger monkey groups lose fights because they contain more deserters

In the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, 150 or so British troops defended a mission station against thousands of Zulu warriors. At the Battle of Thermopylae, around 7,000 Greeks successfully held back a Persian army of hundreds of thousands for seven days. Human history has many examples of a small force defeating or holding their own against a much larger one. Among animals too, the underdogs often become the victors. One such example exists in the rainforests of Panama. There, capuchin monkeys live in large groups, each with its own territory. The monkeys often invade each other’s land. Numbers provide an obvious advantage in such conflicts, but small groups can often successfully defend their territory against big ones. Unlike human underdogs, they don’t win because of superior tactics or weapons. They win because their rivals are full of deserters.

Whole genome sequences of a male and female supercentenarian, ages greater than 114 years

We show that: (1) the sequence variant spectrum of these two individuals’ DNA sequences is largely comparable to existing non-supercentenarian genomes; (2) the two individuals do not appear to carry most of the well-established human longevity enabling variants already reported in the literature; (3) they have a comparable number of known disease-associated variants relative to most human genomes sequenced to-date;

Comparison of measures of marker informativeness for ancestry and admixture mapping.

BACKGROUND: Admixture mapping is a powerful gene mapping approach for an admixed population formed from ancestral populations with different allele frequencies. The power of this method relies on the ability of ancestry informative markers (AIMs) to infer ancestry along the chromosomes of admixed individuals. In this study, more than one million SNPs from HapMap databases have been interrogated in an admixed populations using various measures of ancestry informativeness: Fisher Information Content (FIC), Shannon Information Content (SIC), F statistics (FST), Informativeness for Assignment Measure (In), and the Absolute Allele Frequency Differences (delta). The objectives are to compare these measures of informativeness to select SNP markers for ancestry inference, and to determine the accuracy of AIM panels selected by each measure in estimating the contributions of the ancestors to the admixed population. RESULTS: FST and In had the highest Spearman correlation and the best agreement as measured by Kappa statistics based on deciles. Although the different measures of marker informativeness performed comparably well, analyses based on the top 1 to 10% ranked informative markers of simulated data showed that In was better in estimating ancestry for an admixed population. CONCLUSIONS: Although millions of SNPs have been identified, only a small subset needs to be genotyped in order to accurately predict ancestry with a minimal error rate in a cost-effective manner. In this article, we compared various methods for selecting ancestry informative SNPs using simulations as well as SNP genotype data from samples of admixed populations and showed that the In measure estimates ancestry proportion (in an admixed population) with lower bias and mean square error.

Fluid insight moderates the relationship between psychoticism and crystallized intelligence

To elucidate potential relationships between personality and intelligence it is necessary to move beyond the ad hoc reporting of correlation coefficients and focus instead on testing deductions from well established theories. To this end the present paper references Eysenck’s (1995) theoretical work linking the dimension of psychoticism to both psychosis and creative genius. Drawing on this theory it was argued that the relationship between psychoticism and crystallized ability will be conditional on the level of fluid intelligence. Participants (N = 100) completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R) and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT). Moderated multiple regression revealed a significant interaction effect. Crystallized ability (K-BIT vocabulary) was negatively related to psychoticism at low levels of fluid ability (K-BIT matrices) and positively related to psychoticism at high levels of fluid ability. These findings highlight the potential importance of psychoticism within GfGc investment theory.

MH/CHAOS: The CIA’s Campaign against the Radical New Left and the Black Panthers

Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for a secret domestic spying program conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1960s and early 1970s charged with unmasking any foreign influences on left wing protestors. CIA counterintelligence officer Frank Rafalko was a part of that operation. When The New York Times revealed MHCHAOS in 1974 and Congress investigated, MHCHAOS took its place in the pantheon of intelligence abuses. However, in his new book Rafalko says that the operation was justified and that the CIA was the logical agency to conduct it. Listen as he defends his perspective with dramatic intelligence collected on the New Left and black radicals. This event took place on 26 October 2011.

India paper

The paper, Shared and Unique Components of Human Population Structure and Genome-Wide Signals of Positive Selection in South Asia, is free.

Summing up, our results confirm both ancestry and temporal complexity shaping the still on-going process of genetic structuring of South Asian populations. This intricacy cannot be readily explained by the putative recent influx of Indo-Aryans alone but suggests multiple gene flows to the South Asian gene pool, both from the west and east, over a much longer time span.

Dienekes: "I haven't read the paper fully yet (it's open access), but the abstract seems to agree with what I've written both here and over at the Dodecad blog, about South Asians being primarily a West Asian/South Asian variable mix." In fact, the authors note in the body of the paper:

Another example of an heuristic interpretation appears when we look at the two blue ancestry components (Figure 2B) that explain most of the genetic diversity observed in West Eurasian populations (at K = 8), we see that only the k4 dark blue component is present in India and northern Pakistani populations, whereas, in contrast, the k3 light blue component dominates in southern Pakistan and Iran. This patterning suggests additional complexity of gene flow between geographically adjacent populations because it would be difficult to explain the western ancestry component in Indian populations by simple and recent admixture from the Middle East.

Moreover:

Both PC2 and k5 light green at K = 8 extend from South Asia to Central Asia and the Caucasus (but not into eastern Europe). In an attempt to explore diversity gradients within this signal, we investigated the haplotypic diversity associated with the ancestry components revealed by ADMIXTURE. Our simulations show that one can detect differences in haplotype diversity for a migration event that occurred 500 generations ago, but chances to distinguish signals for older events will apparently decrease with increasing age because of recombination. In terms of human population history, our oldest simulated migration event occurred roughly 12,500 years ago and predates or coincides with the initial Neolithic expansion in the Near East. Knowing whether signals associated with the initial peopling of Eurasia fall within our detection limits requires additional extensive simulations, but our current results indicate that the often debated episode of South Asian prehistory, the putative Indo-Aryan migration 3,500 years ago (see e.g., Abdulla15) falls well within the limits of our haplotype-based approach. We found no regional diversity differences associated with k5 at K = 8. Thus, regardless of where this component was from (the Caucasus, Near East, Indus Valley, or Central Asia), its spread to other regions must have occurred well before our detection limits at 12,500 years. Accordingly, the introduction of k5 to South Asia cannot be explained by recent gene flow, such as the hypothetical Indo-Aryan migration.

First, note that the k5 "light green" ADMIXTURE component does in fact extend into and throughout Europe (apart from Sardinia). The authors believe they've shown "k5" must have "spread" well before the Neolithic. What they've actually demonstrated is that ADMIXTURE (at least as used here) will not be the tool to disentangle complex recent population movements in Eurasia.

23andMe sale Monday

For those who are interested.

"Huge" Genographic Project ancient DNA study underway?

A reader forwards a comment posted to a mailing list yesterday by a project administrator attending FamilyTreeDNA's Houston conference:

Report from the mixer -- Spencer Wells was there and spoke enticingly of a huge ancient DNA research project that's been underway for some time, in which, instead of a simple replacement by incoming Neolithic populations, they are seeing wave after wave of peoples coming over thousands of years, each wave adding a stratum superimposed on those before it. The set of haplogroups seen in the earlier strata were not like the ones we see today. In particular he says mtDNA H was not there until a fairly recent, post-Neolithic date.

It's clear from already-published ancient DNA results that at least some sublineages of H were present in Neolithic Europe -- but H does seem to have become much more common since then.

He is still apparently clinging to a rather old date for R1b, though. He seems to think it had a major expansion about 10,000 years ago. Haven't genetic genealogists mostly been arguing for a considerably more recent time frame? I hope to see some R1b experts engage him in dialog on that point.

That's a 20,000 year step in the right direction. I won't begrudge him the other 5,000 years for now. I just hope the "huge" ancient DNA effort underway includes Y chromosomes. Another comment from the FTDNA conference:

Katherine, Emily, Joan and Bonnie are already tweeting from the FTDNA conference. Their Twitter accounts are: @khborges, @Genealem, @Luxegen and @Greenleafy

You can also follow the hashtag #FTDNA2011 though not all the tweets are going out with the hashtag. [. . .]

FTDNA has tested over 600,000 people.

The Genographic Project has 450,000 public participation samples and 75,000 indigenous samples.

The Genographic Project has two Basque papers going into journals this week and another paper which includes mtDNA haplogroup U5 is due out next year.

And a few more twitter comments:

khborges Katherine H. Borges SW-Phase 1 of Geno is wrapping up. Phase 2 to begin #FTDNA2011

khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW- 1 in 17 men in Med are descended from Phoenician traders

khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW-East Asian human migration patterns follow the rivers

khborges Katherine H. Borges #FTDNA2011 #Genographic SW-10 papers are going off to the journals next week and about a dozen more in the pipeline

Luxegen Joan Miller SW - teaser - big announcement coming in Genographic project next year. #FTDNA2011

Jewish Liberalism: the Allinsmith Study

Polling data is not kind to Moldbug's hilarious explanation for Jewish leftism. In a 1940s survey of eight religious denominations, Congregationalist respondents were least liberal. In Boston, high-SES Jews were more likely to vote for Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952 than low-SES non-Jews -- and low-SES non-Jews voted for Stevenson at twice the rate of high-SES non-Jews.

The degree of commitment of American Jews to liberalism is different from the degree of that commitment among other religious groups. The difference is that the Jewish devotion to liberalism is not correlated with economic or educational status. This was demonstrated almost 20 years ago by Wesley and Beverly Allinsmith.2

Toward the close of World War II, the Allinsmiths asked 8,820 members of eight religious denominations whether they believed that the most important postwar task of the U.S. Government was to provide opportunity for people to get ahead on their own or "to guarantee every person a decent and steady job and standard of living."

Nationally, 47% of the people questioned preferred security to opportunity. As the percentage of manual workers in each denomination increased, the proportion favoring security rose. Status, education and income were inversely related to the choice of security. As one proceeded from Congregationalists to Presbyterians to Episcopalians to Methodists to Lutherans to Baptists and finally to Catholics, the preference for security steadily increased from 26% to 58%.

The Jews were the only exception to this rule. Although they were a very high status group ranking first in occupational level, third in educational level and fourth in economic level, 56% of them preferred security to opportunity. This was almost as high as the Catholic preference for security.

Moreover, within each of the eight religious denominations, the preference for opportunity was greatest among those with most education, highest status and best occupational level. Again, the Jews were the only exception.

The 1944 presidential vote also revealed this marked difference between Jewish and Gentile political behavior. The upper-class and upper-middle-class Christian denominations voted heavily against Roosevelt and in favor of Republican standard-bearer Thomas Dewey. Only 31.4% of the Congregationalists, 39.9% of the Presbyterians and 44.6% of the Episcopalians backed Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The more working-class denominations, however, voted heavily for him, particularly the Catholics who were 72.8% in his favor. In terms of their combined educational, occupational and status rank in the Allinsmith survey-that of second place-the Jews might well have been expected to vote Republican. Actually, they were 92.1% for Roosevelt. This overwhelming support was greater than that of any of the Christian denominations. [. . .]

However, in the 1952 elections, despite the fact that the Republican presidential candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had led the Western coalition to victory over the Nazis, 75% of the Jewish voters supported Adlai E. Stevenson, a man who had played no role of any importance in World War II. There was no difference in the attitude of the candidates toward Jewry or the state of Israel. The issue was clearly one of moderation vs. liberalism. In a situation where American voters as a whole gave decisive support to Eisenhower, three-fourths of the Jews backed his Democratic opponent. Moreover, interviews in depth of Boston voters showed that only 30% of the Gentiles with high socioeconomic status, as against 60% of those with low socioeconomic status, backed Stevenson. Among Boston Jews, 72% of those with high status voted for Stevenson.

Source: Nathaniel Weyl's The Jew in American Politics, pp. 6-8

Penny starting to drop for academics

From "Ancient DNA suggests the leading role played by men in the Neolithic dissemination" (pdf):

The high frequency of G2a haplogroup in Neolithic specimens, whereas this haplogroup is very rare in current populations, also suggests that men could have played a particularly important role in the Neolithic dissemination that is no longer visible today. This would imply that intra-European migrations related to the metal ages may have strongly affected the modern gene pool.

I was intending to comment more, but for now I'll just mention:

(1) I agree with Jean M.: "MtDNA haplogroups were K1a (3), T2b (2), and one each of H3 and U5. Since it seems very likely that all of these except the U5 arrived in the Neolithic, I cannot agree with the conclusions of the authors that the spread of farming was male-led."

(2) The confirmed presence of E-V13 in Neolithic western Europe reinforces for me that those wanting to attribute the reported elevated levels of E-V13 in NE Wales to "Roman soldiers" or the like are probably mistaken.